Typically, my wife and I go out for a brunch on Sunday. Then, we walk around or shop, and then try to find a coffee shop or café to have a snack around 3pm.
Over the last few years, we have noticed an annoying trend for coffee shops to close very early on Sunday - like 1:30.
What’s up with that? Don’t people want a snack in the afternoon? Are we the only ones?
I’d imagine it’s based on demand. Where are you located?
In my area, everything shuts down on Sundays. The old laws preventing businesses to be open on Sundays were voided long ago, but the community just doesn’t do much business on those days. 7700 people in the township and its two villages, and 9 churches.
We’re in the Phoenix Metro area. We were out today, on a beautiful, warm Sunday, and there were people everywhere.
I suppose that it’s possible that we are just weird, but it seems that there is something else driving this…
Yeah, that makes less sense.
I once was unable to find a coffee shop on a weekend in a big bustling downtown city. Salt Lake City. 
I’ve had very good milkshakes in SLC…
The “breakfast/brunch” places in my area (suburban Chicago) typically are open from early in the morning until around 3pm (and I haven’t noticed that this has changed in recent years).
I would guess that, if the OP has seen this over the past few years, it’s COVID-related: either they aren’t now seeing enough business later on Sunday afternoons to warrant staying open as late – around here, many churches didn’t hold in-person worship on Sundays for much of 2020 and 2021, or have had reduced attendance, and I suspect that a fair amount of the “Sunday brunch” business that these restaurants do is among people going out to eat after church. Alternately, it may be that they have reduced staff, and are closing earlier due to this.
Coffee milkshakes?
No.
But, finding coffee and tea is not that hard in SLC anymore.
But, probably nothing like Seattle.
We settled for coca cola in a small restaurant inside one of the major LDS buildings.
Since they probably open up early, mid-afternoon is when an eight-hour shift ends. To stay open later they need twice the number of employees, even if they’re part-time.
Generally speaking, labor is going to be by far the biggest expense for any place selling food/beverages. A lot of people don’t realize this and struggle to understand how a restaurant can afford to “lose money” by being closed when they could have a few customers, given the fixed costs like rent and licenses. But anytime you’re open and not busy, you’re probably losing more money than you’d be if you closed. Coffee shops tend to be busiest on weekday mornings; Sunday afternoon/evenings rarely bring in enough customers to pay even one employee.
Mine as well. Usually 6 or 7AM until 3PM. There used to be more than one 24 hour coffee shop around, but no more.
Our “locally owned” coffee shops (three in town) all close at 1:00 or 1:30 every day. Two are closed on Sunday. They also close for the whole Thanksgiving weekend, school vacation weeks, and random weeks in the summer.
Meanwhile the Starbucks, Dunkin’ and Peet’s franchises are open until 6, 7 or 8pm, seven days a week. The queues at the counter and drive-thrus are there well into the afternoon.
Since the pandemic one of the family owned places has folded and there was a huge outcry from “townies” about how the family owned businesses are getting screwed. One of them opened a walk-up window. The other three said they couldn’t. For a few months when people were reluctant to go indoors, they lost a ton of business.
I say “locally owned” because in reality the Dunkin’, Starbucks and Peet’s locations are also all owned by local people.
By “townies” I mean people who believe the town they live in is the Best Place on Earth with the best schools, library, boutiques, auto repair shops, bakeries, etc. Any contention that it is virtually indistinguishable from a dozen other affluent-ish suburban towns in the same metro area will be about as popular as a Black Lives Matter sign.