A Kitchen That Closes Before the Doors Do

Dinner at half past nine

A pub serves food until nine and keeps its doors open until midnight. Its website and its map listing show one line: open 11 am to midnight.

At half past nine on a Saturday, a couple arrive hungry, hear that the kitchen has closed, and leave. One of them writes a short, sharp review before bed.

Nothing they read was wrong. It simply answered a different question from the one they were asking.

Two sets of hours, one line on the page

For a pub, a brewpub or a bar with a kitchen, opening hours and food hours are different facts, and diners care far more about the second.

A single line of hours gets read as the answer to whatever the reader wants to know. Someone planning dinner reads open until midnight as food until midnight.

Happy hour adds a third set. It is a reason to arrive at a particular time, and if it appears only on a chalkboard inside, nobody can plan around it.

Where diners look first

Most people check hours in a hurry, often on a phone, and few of them reach your menu page. The usual places are:

• The search results, where Google shows hours beside the map.
• A maps app on the phone, drawing on Google's listing or another directory's.
• Review sites such as Yelp, which keep their own copy of your hours.
• Your Facebook page, with its own hours field.
• Your website's home page, for people who click through.
• The door, for anyone already standing outside.

Every one of these can show different hours, and diners believe whichever they saw last. Keeping them consistent matters as much as getting them right.

What a map listing can hold

The Google Places for Business listing behind your Google+ Local page holds one set of opening hours for each day of the week. It has no separate field for the kitchen or for happy hour.

Put the hours the doors are open there, because that is what the listing promises. Listing the kitchen hours instead would turn away people who only want a drink at ten.

Most listings, Facebook pages included, also have room for a short description. A line such as kitchen open until 9 pm belongs there, though not every app displays it.

Publishing all three on your own site

Your website is the one place you control completely. It should state every set of hours plainly, in text rather than in an image, near the top of the home page.

Write it the way a server would say it: open daily from 11:30 am until midnight, kitchen until 9 pm, happy hour weekdays from 3 to 6 pm.

Repeat the kitchen hours at the top of the menu page and in the footer of every page, so a visitor who lands deep in the site sees them too.

If a lighter menu runs after the kitchen closes, say what it is and until when. Nachos until eleven is useful information; late snacks is not.

Use the same times and the same words for each set of hours wherever they appear. A diner who sees identical lines in two places stops wondering which one is current.

A worked example

An outdoor gear store in a mountain town sells clothing, camping gear and skis, and runs a rental and repair counter at the back for skis, snowshoes and bikes.

The store stays open until nine on Thursdays and Fridays, but the rental counter closes at six. Its listing and website showed only the store's hours.

Most weeks someone arrived after work on a Thursday to collect skis for the weekend and found the counter dark. A few said so in reviews.

The website now shows two lines of hours at the top of every page, one for the store and one for rentals and repairs. The rental page repeats them beside the booking form.

The map listing kept the store's hours, with a line about the counter in its description. Rental confirmations state the pickup hours, and staff mention them on the phone.

The hours for each errand now reach customers while they plan the trip, not when they reach the door.

Keeping every copy the same

Hours drift when they change in one place and not the others. Write down every place your hours appear, and work through the whole list whenever anything changes.

Seasonal changes are the usual trap. A kitchen that closes earlier in winter needs every listing changed when it does, and changed back in spring.

Statutory holidays deserve a notice on the website a week ahead, with the kitchen's plans stated separately from the bar's.

Replying to the review

When a diner arrives after the kitchen has closed and writes about it, reply calmly and briefly. Apologise for the disappointment, give the kitchen hours, and invite them back for dinner.

Keep the reply short and specific. A long defence reads worse than the review, and future diners will read both.

Then check whether the review has a point. If they read open until midnight and expected food, the fault lies in how the hours were published.

The counter-case

A pub that serves food until closing has one set of hours, and one line says everything. A restaurant without a bar is in the same position.

Some owners worry that an early kitchen time tells late customers to stay away. It only tells hungry ones, who would otherwise leave disappointed; people coming for a drink come either way.

Wherever the kitchen closes before the doors do, the second set of hours belongs everywhere the first one appears.

Three sets of hours, one routine

1. Write down all three sets of hours.
2. Set them out in text high on the home page.
3. Repeat the kitchen hours on the menu page.
4. Keep door hours in the map listing.
5. Mention the kitchen in each listing's description.
6. List every place your hours appear.
7. Change them all on the same day.

Step two settles the question for anyone who reaches the site, because the website can hold all three sets of hours together, worded exactly as staff would say them.

Reviews from set menu diners at a restaurant festival has more on answering reviews in a way that invites people back on an ordinary night.

Frequently asked questions

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