We have a shop that sells food , sanitiser , masks and stationery. The council won’t let us open ,even though WH Smiths opposite are allowed.
In other districts shops such as ours have the blessing of Trading Standards. One gift shop has taken to selling some fruit and veg to stay open.
This got me thinking that I could use half the shop to sell the old bikes and bits that my cycling circle have accumulated. We also have a lot of cycling related gifts ,recycled innertube wallets, cycling socks, birthday cards etc.
I’ve already sold one bike through the shop before lock down so a precedent has been set.
Do I need to register with the council?
Would I be able to also sell non cycling goods?

Not sure about registering with the council but…

Would I be able to also sell non cycling goods?

I don’t see why not given I can walk into Tesco and buy scatter cushions, a magazine, some food colouring, a Barbie etc

Whether thats right or not is another question. It sounds like your shop sells a base of more essential items than my local Tescos does…

If you sell food why aren’t you allowed to open?

The sweet shop in my town is open

Slackboy,exactly.

In other districts shops such as ours have the blessing of Trading Standards.

I think this is your key area. If you sell food, why are you not able to open? If the council have closed you by exceeding their powers, what compensation are they going to pay you in court?

(Could screw the shops in the other districts if it’s your council who is right)

IANA Planning Specialist, but retail is retail from a planning perspective (not including hot food)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_use_classes_in_England#Class_A1_%E2%80%93_shops_and_retail_outlets

So, the only other thing to check would be on any lease / property title clauses.

@zippykona, where are you and what does your shop mainly sell? If you’re in England, as far as I can tell, if you sell food you count as an essential shop – the legal document is at
https://legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/1200/pdfs/uksi_20201200_en.pdf

I guess it may come down to your business classification with Companies House. I run a bike shop; our classification is
“47640 – Retail sale of sports goods, fishing gear, camping goods, boats and bicycles”
so we’ve been explicitly allowed to stay open during both lockdowns, which is fortunate because we seem to be keeping an awful lot of people running on their bikes, whether to avoid public transport, for exercise or just for escape and mental health.

As a note about selling second-hand bikes, I’d recommend doing a lot of thinking about the maths involved. Very few bike shops sell second-hand bikes because you need to make quite a big margin to pay for the work, the storage and the liability involved. So you either need to buy the bikes for significantly less than the seller could get on classifieds / Gumtree / eBay, or you need to charge significantly more for the bikes you sell than many people would otherwise pay for second-hand bikes through the above channels, or a combination of both.

To make it worthwhile you’d ideally have to buy knackered bikes for next to nothing, strip them and fit new bits to them and make them work (and look) superbly and sell them for a good price. But knackered bikes are hard to work on and can take a long time because parts are often seized, worn, rusty, dead and / or hard to remove. Or just weird and obsolete if you’re trying to find, say, a matching 7-speed STI or an obscure derailleur. So you need to allow for a lot of time, a lot of workshop mess, plenty of specific and sometimes discontinued tools for all those weird bits, and a lot of exasperation at what should be a simple job… all to have the customer turn their nose up at something because it “looks old” and they think they could have done it up themselves.

I’m not trying to discourage you, I’m just trying to warn you that it’s seldom as easy or as profitable as it may seem. But good luck if you do go for it!

To make it worthwhile you’d ideally have to buy knackered bikes for next to nothing, strip them and fit new bits to them and make them work (and look) superbly and sell them for a good price.

or put them up for sale at £1000, they wont sell, but youre open for business with your other goods that you cant sell at present?

There’s a few second hand bike shops doing ok in the nw, I was buying an inner tube in one and a chap came in sold about 5 bikes for 50 quid. I think it was the tip man actually, not bad bikes either. So 10 quid a bike cost, either break them for parts or sell them on whole.

The other guy has an industrial unit and just buys and sells them, all by social media. He s got a real mixed bag from bromptons, a 70s Raleigh chopper to the usual tip finds.

Don’t all the bike shop guys on here say 90% of their business is 100 quid bikes.

The food bit of our shop is our chocolates. Physically it only takes up a small area of our shop but is a huge part of our takings (along with face masks and sanitiser).
The man from the council said that we didn’t look like a food shop as physically we sold more non food stuff.
We asked why Smiths and garden centres could be open ,they couldn’t give us a satisfactory answer. They said we should look on the government website as it was really clear…..it clearly says if you sell food you can open.
Anyway, there’s no arguing with people like that. So the change of track.

or put them up for sale at £1000, they wont sell, but youre open for business with your other goods that you cant sell at present?

I do genuinely have some pub bikes I want to move on but my nice bikes would have a premium price tag!

I popped into the local garden centre and all the garden stuff was in a shed out the back. The entire main building, including the cafe space, was full of Christmas tat. If that’s allowed then I’m sure your plan is fine

If I was in this situation I would have considered getting a pallet of food (tins or something that isn’t perishable) from a cash and carry and putting it front of shop, and justify it as doing it for local community needs. B&M are no more than 10% food and they stayed open.

If I was in this situation I would have considered getting a pallet of food (tins or something that isn’t perishable) from a cash and carry and putting it front of shop, and justify it as doing it for local community needs.

Very much this. Preferably cans of Coca Cola with ‘multipack – not for resale’ written in Turkish on 😀