all I can add from our experience of small local post office / shops is that they appear to be real genuine back breaking hard work - which although it's not something I would ever be afraid of I have seen one postmistress in this area in tears more than once.

Ditto to everything above - do check if its on the list to be closed or maybe closed and does the shop pay for itself without the post office - often not as people are coming in for their post office bits and then buy odds and ends ..

I have had a gift/craft shop .. and I really dont want to be on a downer here but it barely broke even never mind made a profit - and we did work so very hard.

having said that loads of people run small shops and just adore it - the social interaction the cleaning and arranging of all the stock - and the VAT rtuens (oh sorry a negative jumped in there lol)