I've talked before about how troublesome it is to get food in Taiwan. That most places are only open for a very limited lunch and dinner time. And even if you do within those times, there is no guarantee that there will be food, because once they run out, you're out of luck.
Unfortunately hours of business doesn't just adhere to small family owned places. It also is for larger places and chains. While a lot of places in taiwan may say they are open until 9 or 10 or what ever time they choose, usually the places closes upwards of an hour before that.
Basically it's because of the...."special" business practices they have here. While in America if a place closes at 9, the employees are usually schedule to work until 9:30 or 10, just so they can get all the extra work of clean up and finances done. However in Taiwan, if the place closes at 9 than it means the workers are only paid until 9.
Meaning they will close up and stop letting people in at maybe 8:15, so then they can make sure to be done and gone by 9. Essentially making hours of operation worthless. This isn't just restaurants, this is pretty much any store of any kind in Taiwan. This is even true with schools. If the last class ends at 10pm, than you can be sure that when you exit that class the rest of the school is a ghost town, with the receptionist gone and the lights already turned off.
All this means that whenever you want something you pretty much have to take their hours of operation and move them back an hour, just to be on the safe side. So it was nice to see this sign on a place that recently opened. Granted if they want to be out by 9, they will probably be closing up shop at 8:30, but at least the "8:50" on this sign was a bit more honest than most places.
