diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index ec97184d0..0d067b1c3 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -43,5 +43,3 @@ locale/**/*.js
 /prisma/scripts/data
 /prisma/scripts/output
 dumped.sql
-
-/utils/data/patrons.json
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index a7349fcfb..f5daffb10 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -46,8 +46,6 @@ With the following steps you can access a few pages that don't need a database.
 3. Run `npm run compile` to compile translation files.
 4. Run `npm run dev` to start the development server at http://localhost:3000/. (To stop the server at any time, type `Ctrl+C`.)
 
-If you do not intend to perform any additional setup steps, you will also need to create an empty list of patrons in `utils/data/patrons.json`:
-
 ```
 []
 ```
diff --git a/utils/data/patrons.json b/utils/data/patrons.json
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..fe51488c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/utils/data/patrons.json
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+[]