Reddit pain points

The deliverable is a ranked pain table, not a summary of vibes: every row is a complaint that recurs across distinct threads and people, counted by a script, with the words people used and a link to each.

Method

1. Pick where the operators talk. One to four subreddits of people who have the problem (r/restaurateur, r/HVAC, r/smallbusiness), not people who sell to them. Twelve months is a good default window.

2. Pull the whole corpus, not a keyword slice, so counts aren't shaped by your guesses. Add --queries only when the sub is general and you need to narrow it to a trade.

python3 scripts/reddit_pull.py --subreddits restaurateur \
  --after 2025-11-01 --before 2026-11-01 --top 0 --comments 15 --comments-for 60 \
  > pull.json 2> pull.log

3. Discover candidate pains from sentences that carry complaint words:

python3 scripts/reddit_tally.py phrases pull.json --near-preset pain --min-threads 3 --top 40

4. Write themes.json: 6-15 pains, named in the operators' words, each a list of regexes. Read the phrase table and a sample of pain sentences, then group:

{"Staffing: no-shows and quitting": ["no.?show", "quit", "call(ed|s)? out", "can't find (good )?(staff|cooks|help)"],
 "Food and supplier costs":        ["food cost", "price of (beef|eggs|chicken)", "supplier", "sysco"]}

5. Count, then refine. Check what the themes missed, add or split themes, re-run:

python3 scripts/reddit_tally.py themes pull.json --themes themes.json --near-preset pain --show-unmatched 30
python3 scripts/reddit_tally.py themes pull.json --themes themes.json --near-preset pain --quotes 3

The table has two counts that answer different questions: threads (how often the topic comes up at all) and in a complaint sentence (threads where it sits next to a pain or complaint word). Report both. --near-preset pain restricts the whole count to complaint sentences; it is strict, because people describe pain without saying "frustrating".

The deliverable

1. The corpus line and the in-scope / matched / unmatched line, verbatim from the tally.
2. The ranked table: pain, threads, authors, first, last, months active.
3. Under each of the top pains, 2-3 verbatim quotes with permalinks.
4. One line per pain on what it is, in plain words. Analysis is yours; numbers are not.

Rank by distinct threads, then authors. A pain raised in 40 threads by 38 people over 11 months is a pattern; one raised 40 times by 3 people in one week is a flame war.

Ground rules (every skill in this series)

• Every number comes from reddit_tally.py. Threads, authors, counts, dates, rates: paste them from its output. Never estimate, round up, or count by reading.
• Every quote is verbatim, short (25 words or fewer), and carries its permalink. The tally prints them that way; don't paraphrase inside quote marks.
• Print the corpus line. The tally's first line (documents, threads, authors, subreddits, dates) goes at the top of the deliverable, so a reader knows the sample.
• The keywords shaped the corpus. A count is a property of your pull, not of the subreddit: "41 of the threads I pulled" is honest, "41% of r/X" is not.
• Absence is not proof. The archive lags live Reddit and has gaps; a zero is reported as a zero for this window and these subreddits, nothing wider.
• Vendor pitches are dropped before counting. Owner subreddits are full of "I built a tool for X, what's your biggest pain?" posts; the tally drops them (and the pitcher's own replies) and prints how many (digest keeps everything). --keep-pitches turns that off.
• Archive quirks (silent truncation, why server-side search is useless, the dead alternatives) live in the reddit-mining tool skill. Read it if a pull looks thin.

Nothing here bundles, hosts or resells Reddit data: the scripts query the public Arctic Shift archive from your own machine, and Reddit's terms (and Arctic Shift's) govern what you do with what you pull.

Setup

The scripts sit in scripts/ beside this file: reddit_pull.py (fetch) and reddit_tally.py (count). Python 3, standard library only, no key, no login. Pulls over a busy subreddit take minutes: run them in the background and write to a file. Part of a set: reddit-mining (the tool skill), reddit-pain-points, reddit-demand-check, reddit-tool-stack, reddit-competitor-chatter, reddit-customer-language, reddit-thread-digest.

Example (real run, trimmed)

r/restaurateur, 2025-11-01 to 2026-11-01, whole corpus pulled (no --queries), 12 themes.

Corpus: 2,027 documents (1,143 posts, 884 comments) in 1,145 threads by 1,420 authors, r/restaurateur, 2025-11-02 to 2026-10-31. Dropped as vendor pitches / market research: 94 posts (+7 of the pitche…
In scope: 2,020 documents. Matched at least one theme: 699. Matched none: 1,321.

| # | theme | threads | in a complaint sentence | authors | mentions | first | last | months active | | 1 | Staffing: hiring, no-shows, turnover | 146 | 9 | 189 | 202 | 2025-11-06 | 2026-10-31 | 12 | | 2 | Reviews and marketing | 89 | 2 | 118 | 128 | 2025-11-11 | 2026-10-30 | 12 | | 3 | Food and supplier costs | 71 | 4 | 78 | 87 | 2025-11-05 | 2026-10-30 | 12 | | 4 | Cash flow and profitability | 70 | 5 | 84 | 94 | 2025-11-17 | 2026-10-29 | 12 | | 5 | Card processing, POS and chargebacks | 69 | 6 | 87 | 103 | 2025-11-03 | 2026-10-31 | 12 | | 6 | Payroll, tips and wages | 62 | 4 | 91 | 102 | 2025-11-02 | 2026-10-20 | 12 | | 7 | Delivery apps and third-party fees | 53 | 3 | 66 | 72 | 2025-11-29 | 2026-10-20 | 12 | | 8 | Equipment and repairs | 51 | 9 | 63 | 66 | 2025-11-04 | 2026-10-20 | 11 | | 9 | Inventory, waste and ordering | 47 | 3 | 51 | 52 | 2025-11-17 | 2026-10-24 | 12 | | … | (4 more rows) | | | | | | | | |

Staffing: hiring, no-shows, turnover

• "Menu printing and updating is a major non-productive time suck for a staff person." (2026-01-09, https://reddit.com/comments/1q87xuw/_/nylk2q4)
• "Finding and holding good staff is always and will always be the hardest part." (2026-10-02, https://reddit.com/comments/1wvpzjl/_/pdhbnmu)

Food and supplier costs

• "January data (per NRN's article, "Menu inflation moderated in January") shows menu price increases slowing month-to-month." (2026-02-18, https://reddit.com/comments/1r8areq)
• "I thought the hardest part of running a food business would be labor, food cost, equipment breaking… but honestly?" (2025-11-22, https://reddit.com/comments/1p3ydjp)

Slow sales and foot traffic

• "Now heading into summer, the slow season for hotpot." (2026-06-09, https://reddit.com/comments/1u1anag)
• "Struggling with foot traffic for my small restaurant" (2026-10-20, https://reddit.com/comments/1xaicdi)

Reading it: staffing is the most-discussed topic (146 threads, 189 authors), but "Slow sales and foot traffic" has the highest share of threads where the mention sits in a complaint sentence (6 of 18, against 9 of 146 for staffing). The two columns separate what owners talk about from what they complain about; report both. 94 posts were dropped as vendor pitches before counting.