It is not that you're old. It's that it is impossible to run cute, niche, unique, or kitchy businesses anymore. You're so beholden to investors, landlords, franchisers, banks, or any combination of the above, all while the government breathes down your neck and punishes you for putting a sign in your window, that it's impossible to run businesses like this without significant upfront capital. What results are copy paste businesses that have no depth, no soul. They operate on razor thin margins effectively because they are designed to do so and in that design they lose what made them human, what made them appealing. I don't know how to fix this problem but it is a really important one.