How to Post Holiday Hours and Closures So People Read Them

Someone drives from Melvindale to Dearborn on a holiday, parks, walks up to your door, and finds it locked. They pull out their phone. Your last post was four days ago and it was a plate of lamb. Nothing about being closed. Now they are annoyed, and they are annoyed at you, not at the calendar.

That is the whole problem with restaurant holiday hours on social media. You knew you were closed. Your staff knew. Your regulars who come in every Friday knew because you told them at the counter. Nobody else did.

Here is how to handle it so the message actually lands.

Your hours live in four places and at least two of them are wrong

Before you post anything, go check where your hours are published right now:

• Google. This is the one that matters most, because it is what shows up when someone searches your name from the car. Google lets you set special hours for holidays in advance. Do that first. It is the only one that changes what shows up in search.
• Instagram bio and the Facebook page "hours" field.
• Delivery apps, if you use them. A closed restaurant that is still accepting orders on an app creates a worse problem than a locked door.
• Your voicemail, if you have one.

Update all of them before you make a single post. A post is a reminder. The listings are the record. If the post says closed and Google says open until 10, the customer believes Google.

Post it twice before, and once the morning of

One post is not enough. Not because people are careless, but because most of your followers will not open the app on the day you happen to post.

A simple rhythm that works:

• Three to four days out. A real post in the feed. Dates, hours, done.
• The day before. A story, with the same information. Add a countdown sticker if you want.
• The morning of. Another story. This is the one that catches the person deciding where to eat right now.

If it is a multi-day closure, post a story each morning you are closed. It feels repetitive to you because you wrote it. To the person scrolling, it is the first time.

Write it so it reads in two seconds

The mistake is burying the information in a paragraph about how grateful you are for your community this season. That is a fine sentiment. Put it second.

Lead with the fact. The post graphic or the first line of the caption should answer exactly one question: are you open or not, and when.

Something like:

Closed Thursday, November 27 for Thanksgiving. Back open Friday at 11am.

Then, underneath, say whatever else you want. Thank your staff. Thank your regulars. Nobody minds. Just do not make them read it to find out if they can get breakfast.

Two more details that save you DMs:

Say the day of the week and the date. "Closed Thursday" alone makes people check a calendar. "Closed Thursday, November 27" does not.

Always include the reopen time. Every closure post should end with when you are back. Half the people who see a closed post are not trying to come today. They are trying to figure out when they can.

Put it on the image, not just in the caption

Captions get cut off. People read the first line and scroll. If the only place the information exists is in paragraph three of the caption, you have hidden it.

The closure notice should be readable in the photo or video itself, as text, large enough to read on a phone at a glance. You do not need design talent for this. A clean photo of your food with the dates on top of it does the job. Keep the same look every time you do it so regulars recognize the format.

Stories are the same. Text on screen. Big. High enough on the frame that the reply box does not cover it.

A sudden closure is a different post than a planned one

Power outage. Equipment down. Short staffed on a Sunday. Snow.

These need to go up fast and they need to go up in the places people check first: a story, a feed post, and your Google listing marked as temporarily closed if it is going to last more than an hour or two.

Two rules for the sudden one:

Do not over-explain. "Closed today, equipment issue. We will post as soon as we are back." That is enough. You do not owe anyone a full account of what broke.

Do not promise a reopen time you are not sure of. If you say back tomorrow at 11 and you are not, you have now disappointed the same person twice. Say "we will post as soon as we are back" and then actually post.

Reopening deserves its own post

People who saw the closure post are now operating on old information. If you were closed for a week in Dearborn Heights and you quietly open the doors on Monday, half your regulars still think you are dark.

Make the reopen a post. Not an apology, not a long story. Doors open, here is today's food, here is the hours. It is also the easiest post of the month to make, because the kitchen is running and everything looks good.

The DMs are coming no matter how well you post

Someone will still message asking if you are open. This is not a failure. It is just how people use the app. Answer them, and keep the answer short and friendly, because that person is trying to spend money with you.

If you get the same question twenty times, pin the closure post to the top of your profile so it is the first thing anyone sees when they tap your name.

This is the kind of thing that falls off a busy owner's plate

Not because it is hard. Because you are running a holiday service with two people out, and posting hours is the fourth most important thing you are holding.

This is part of what we handle for the restaurants we work with. The schedule is fixed, the holiday posts are planned ahead of the week they are needed, and every post is tracked across platforms on our dashboard so nothing quietly gets skipped during the busiest stretch of the year. You give us one call and a few references and we shoot, write and post from there. If that sounds better than remembering it at 11pm the night before Eid, book a call and tell us what your calendar looks like.

Or just call. (313) 633-5714.