Pubs change their hours more than almost any other venue. Bank holidays, a late licence for a match, longer summer-garden evenings, a one-off close for a private function — and every change is a chance for the website to be wrong. If updating it means messaging whoever built the site, it usually just doesn’t happen.
The problem with how most pubs do it
On most pub sites the hours are typed into the page. To change them you either log into a CMS you touch twice a year and have to relearn each time, or you email the agency and wait. Neither fits the speed a pub actually changes — so the site drifts out of date, and customers turn up to a locked door.
What good looks like
Updating opening times should take seconds, from your phone, behind the bar. That means the hours shouldn’t live in the website at all — they should live in a dashboard the website reads from.
- Set your regular weekly hours once.
- Add a bank-holiday or one-off closure with a start and end — it applies and reverts on its own.
- Show a live “open now / closed” line so customers see the truth at a glance.
- Change it from your phone; new page views update within a minute.
The web guy should build you a great site. He shouldn’t be a dependency every time you close early for a private party.
Set it up once
A live opening hours widget puts you in control: the developer adds it when they build the site, and from then on you manage the times yourself. Foldout’s opening hours widget is built for exactly this — set up once, then updated from the dashboard whenever the pub’s plans change, with no phone call required.