Open or closed during class
The tradeoffs of running classes while your shop is open to walk-ins versus closing for a dedicated session.
This is a real decision with real consequences in both directions. There is no universal right answer, and you'll meet hosts who feel strongly about both approaches. What matters is which one works for your space, your team, and the kind of experience you want to offer.
Running closed is simpler for your first class
Close to walk-ins for the duration, book the whole space, and the experience is contained. Guests aren't navigating around retail customers. You can set up without worrying about product displays being in the way. You aren't splitting attention between the class and the register.
For most shops running their first class, closed is the right call. It removes one variable from a situation that already has plenty of them. Once you know what the class feels like to run, you can decide whether adding the retail layer makes sense.
If you're undecided, default to closed for your first two or three classes. Run the class cleanly. Once you have a sense of the rhythm, decide whether staying open during future sessions is something your layout and team can actually support.
Running open is possible with the right layout
A dedicated back room, a defined prep area, a side studio with a door: if your space has a natural separation between class and retail floor, you can run both at once.
A flower shop with a workroom behind the walk-in cooler. A coffee bar with a side room that has its own entrance. A pottery studio with a partition between the class wheel area and the gallery. In these spaces, a class runs quietly ten feet from a customer browsing shelves, and neither experience suffers.
The condition that makes it work is separation. Not just physical distance, but clear separation of attention. Guests in class feel like they're in a private experience. Walk-in customers feel like they're in a shop. When those two things blur into each other, both suffer.
The most common mistake when running open is also the one guests notice most: the host leaving the class to handle something on the retail floor. Once a guest sees you walk away from the class to answer a question at the register, the class stops being a contained experience. It becomes an interruption waiting to happen. If you're running open, someone else needs to be covering retail.
The split-attention problem
Running open without another person on the floor is a trap. You're the host. Your attention belongs to the class. Walk-in customers who find the register unmanned will leave or interrupt. Either outcome breaks the class.
The fix is simple but requires planning: have one other person handling retail for the duration of the class. A part-time worker, a partner, a reliable regular who wants a few hours. Even someone with minimal product knowledge can handle basic questions and ring through purchases while you run the room.
If you don't have that person yet, the next article covers how to find them inside your own team.
The sign on the door
Whether you run open or closed, a sign on the door works better than nothing. "Private class in session, back at [time]" keeps walk-in expectations clear and, as a side effect, generates curiosity.
More than a few regular customers have asked about booking the next class after seeing the sign. They noticed something was happening in a space they thought they knew. The sign made it feel special. That's not an accident: it is special. Let the door say so.
A ceramics shop ran open for their first three classes without a second staff member on the floor. The owner kept leaving the class to help retail customers who wandered in. After the third class, she moved to a closed-door model for the class window, put a sign on the door with the class end time, and added a QR code linking to the booking page. Curiosity from the sign drove five bookings in the next month. She hasn't run open since.