A family drives across town on a bank holiday Monday because the map listing says open. The door is locked, the sign in the window says back Tuesday, and the listing has said the same wrong thing for two years.
They will not check again next time. They will go somewhere else, permanently, over a question that took nobody ten minutes to answer.
1. Accept how often this is asked
Hours are the most common thing anybody wants to know about a food business, and most places answer it in three places that disagree with each other.
2. Fix the map listing first
It is where the answer is read, more than the website. Everything else is secondary and most businesses do it in the opposite order.
3. Put the hours in text, not an image
A graphic of your hours cannot be read by a search engine, cannot be copied and does not update. This is still extremely common.
4. Publish the kitchen times separately
Open until five with food until three is two different answers, and customers arriving at half past three are disappointed by something you did tell them, badly.
5. Publish holiday hours a month ahead
Christmas, new year and bank holidays. Customers plan, and a business that has published a schedule receives enquiries about other things instead, which is the anticipation in bank holiday enquiries.
6. Say what you are doing on the day itself
Reduced hours, a limited menu or closed entirely. A vague seasonal hours apply tells nobody anything useful.
7. Cover the annual closure honestly
Businesses that close for a fortnight in January should say so prominently, because regulars plan around it and strangers are simply lost.
8. Put last orders on the page
For kitchens, for the counter and for anything that needs preparation. It is the second most common question after opening at all.
9. Explain seasonal changes with the reason
Shorter winter hours make sense to customers when explained and look like decline when they are not.
10. Keep the seasonal product answers alongside
Customers asking about hours in December are frequently asking about something else, which is the pattern in seasonal product questions customers ask every year.
11. Answer the trade questions separately
Wholesale customers need delivery days rather than opening hours, and the two get confused, as covered in wholesale bread and pastry enquiries from local cafes.
12. Handle the unexpected closure properly
Staff illness, a burst pipe, a delivery failure. Somewhere to post it that customers actually read is worth setting up before you need it.
13. Treat access questions as part of the same answer
Parking, step free entry and where to find the door are asked in the same breath, which is the category in branch access and appointment questions members ask.
14. Answer the question when the shop is shut
Which is when it is asked. Somebody deciding on Sunday evening whether to come on Monday needs an answer on Sunday evening, and an assistant that gives the hours, the holiday schedule and the kitchen times handles the most frequent enquiry you receive without anybody being there. See features.
15. What consistency actually saves
A family who drove across town and found the door locked. Start at try, and the sector view sits under restaurants.