A Guy Put a Pay and Display Machine Outside His Shop and Made Half a Million Pounds
The story of how a guy saved his convenience store and made half a million extra in the process
I was at a friend’s birthday a few weeks back and got talking to a fellow attendee about business, I will call him Fred. Fred had long since retired but used to own a high street shop on the outskirts of a town in the north-east of England. He recounted to me the following story that took place between the 80s and early 90s, which I feel compelled to share.
It was a convenience store that he owned, and out front, there were five parking bays. There were about thirty on the street in total, along with several other shops. The purpose of the bays was for people to gain access to the high street shops. Out back there was also a small car park, the purpose of the car park was for people to use the local stores. Both the car park and the parking bays were council owned and as such were free of charge.
The first twenty years he owned the store were profitable, but then a metro station opened nearby (a.k.a. a subway station) and suddenly the parking bays and the car park started to fill each morning before his store — along with any of the other shops on the street — even opened. It was not shoppers using the bays, people were simply parking on the high street and in the car park and then jumping on the Metro to go to work in the city centre.
This posed a problem for Fred and his fellow shop owners, as there were no parking spaces available, they completely lost all passing trade. Immediately their bottom lines took a hit. They complained to the local council about it, asking them to put in a pay-and-display machine, but it was clear they were not going to do anything.
The months passed by and Fred and his fellow shop owners’ frustrations grew. They tried everything to stop the Metro users from using all the spaces, putting cones in the parking bays. Everything. But it was an endless battle and it never felt like they were winning.
That was until one day Fred by chance came across an old pay-and-display machine at a scrapyard. It was fully functioning. In that moment he had a brain spark. If he put this up outside his store, and put on it free parking up to 30 minutes, 50p an hour thereafter, it would sort the problem. The Metro users would stop parking there, and shoppers would again be able to park on the high street to do their shopping.
So, he purchased it, then he told his fellow shop owners of his plan. With all of them at the end of their tethers, they agreed it was worth a try. And so, he set the machine up outside his store on a Sunday evening, and put some signs up on the high street warning people that pay-and-display was now in operation for all stays longer than thirty minutes.
Early the next morning as usual he gets up and goes to work, and is extremely happy to see that there are hardly any cars parked on the high street. Not just that, but of the several cars parked there, all of them had purchased a ticket — for the full day. At first, he was a little bit nervous about this, the legality inevitably was highly questionable, the road was after all public owned.
By the end of the week his nervousness had increased, he checked how much money was in the machine and to his astonishment, found the number to be over £100 — a sizeable sum of money back then.
Needless to say, the shop owners had a discussion about this, what should they do with all the money. Could they face prosecution? They felt it highly likely they would. The problem was, the pay-and-display machines were doing their job, Metro users were no longer using the parking bays, meaning the passing trade had returned increasing revenue.
They decided to give it a month and by the end of the month, the takings of the pay-and-display machine were over a thousand pounds. Not just that, but the revenues of all the shops had returned to the levels they had been prior to the Metro station opening.
Despite this, there were still deep rumblings about the fact that the legality of this was highly questionable, and so Fred said he was happy to take so ownership for the operation. In return, they said he could keep all the money from it. It seemed a win-win for Fred and for the other shop owners. They got their revenues increased back to normal levels, and if things went wrong, it was Fred who would take the hit.
And so began Fred’s pay-and-display racket. To make it look more legit, he set up another machine on the other side of the road. He then set up another machine in the small car park out back. He even got legit signage with the details of the charges for parking. In terms of parking fines, he simply didn’t operate any. The people who didn’t pay simply “got away with it” and thought themselves lucky.
Also, to help protect himself further, he wrote in small print on all the machines that there was no legal necessity to pay, and that the machines had been installed to help the high street.
For over twelve years he operated this racket without any trouble, earning over that period he reckoned close to half a million pounds. It only came to an end when one day all the shop owners on the street got a letter through the post.
It was from an “anonymous” source, and it made clear that it was illegal to operate a pay-and-display system on a public owned street without the permission of the local authorities, and they were told that the pay-and-display machines had to be removed at once otherwise they would face prosecution.
I asked him if he had any idea who had sent the letter. He told me he had his suspicions but was keeping them to himself. Anyway, realising the gig was up, Fred that night took down all the signage and removed the pay-and-display machines.
The most frustrating thing for him was though, within a week, both the high street and the little car park became filled up again with people using the Metro, and by the end of the month because of that his takings along with all the other shop owners’ takings were well down.
I won’t tell you what Fred thought about that, but I suspect you can guess. Though what he claimed infuriated him the most was that, several months later not only did the council put double yellow lines on the high street, stopping anybody from parking on it, they put a pay-and-display machine in the car park which offered nobody a stay of execution.
That meant that there was no parking for thirty minutes for free like there had been under his system, to use the car park you had to pay. There were numerous visits by parking wardens to make certain that people got that hint.
I asked Fred if his revenues ever recovered. He told me they had not, and so he had gotten out and retired. In terms of how he spends his retirement, mostly sunning it up in Tenerife in his villa. I asked him if his fellow shop owners ever felt regret over not sharing in the income.
He told me that they did not, their only regret was that he was not running the pay-and-display anymore. A few of the shop owners from his former high street were also attending the birthday, and they confirmed this fact. Fred kept our High Street alive, they insisted, the council is trying to kill it.
All I can say to the story is, to all those people who had to pay to park Fred will likely be seen as an evil genius, to the local council, he will likely be seen as a public nuisance, but to his fellow shop owners, it seems he is a hero. I will let people make their own judgement over which one he really is. But one thing is certain, and this story is the ultimate proof of it, if ever you see a pay-and-display machine, check the small print. It may just save you some money.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:
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