Holiday hours should be said before the phone rings, not after. A clear restaurant holiday hours announcement saves time, cuts confusion, and keeps callers from guessing whether you are open.
The goal is simple: make the hours easy to hear, easy to find, and hard to misunderstand. That means your greeting, website, Google info, and backup call flow should all say the same thing.
Key takeaways
- Say the holiday date, special hours, and ordering options in the first sentence or two.
- Put the same holiday hours on the phone, website, Google listing, and voicemail.
- Test your call forwarding with a real call before the holiday rush starts.
- Use one short script for staff so everyone says the same thing.
- Update the message again if the holiday plan changes during the day.
In this post
- What should a restaurant holiday hours announcement say?
- Where should callers hear the holiday hours first?
- How do I write the message so it does not sound confusing?
- How can I route holiday calls without making customers wait?
- What should I do a week before the holiday?
- How do I keep holiday hours updated after the rush starts?
- Questions owners ask
What should a restaurant holiday hours announcement say?
Keep it short and specific. Callers do not need a speech. They need the date, the hours, and what they can still do.
A good phone line sounds like this: "Thanks for calling Mario’s Pizza. We’re open on Christmas Eve from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed on Christmas Day, and back to normal hours on December 26. You can still place pickup orders while we’re open."
Use these parts every time:
- Holiday name or date
- Special open and close time
- Whether pickup and delivery orders are available
- Any changes to dine-in, reservations, or catering
- A simple repeat of the next normal day
If you have a second location, do not copy the same message blindly. One shop may close early while the other stays open later. ROAL can read hours from your public pages and answer basic questions about hours and address, but it still helps to make the holiday wording exact. If the message is for a busy season like Thanksgiving week or New Year’s Eve, keep the recording fresh and remove it right after the holiday ends.
Where should callers hear the holiday hours first?
Start with the phone greeting, because that is where the caller is already looking for an answer. Then mirror the same message everywhere else.
Use this order:
- Phone greeting or holiday message
- Website hours page or homepage banner
- Google Maps listing hours
- Voicemail backup message
- Staff script at the counter
A caller should not hear one thing on the phone and another thing online. That creates extra calls and annoyed customers. For example, if you are closed at 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, put that exact time in the phone message and on the website.
A simple staff script helps too: "We’re on holiday hours today, so we close at 6. If you’d like pickup, please call before then."
If you use How it works, the key idea is that ROAL reads your public hours and address when you set it up. So if your holiday hours are already posted clearly, the phone host can answer many of those calls for you. The cleaner your source info, the fewer corrections your team has to make later.
How do I write the message so it does not sound confusing?
Short sentences work best. Avoid long lists, jokes, and too many exceptions. Most callers are trying to place an order, not listen to a holiday speech.
Use this simple structure:
- Greeting
- Holiday hours
- What happens next
- Closing
Example script: "Thanks for calling Rosa’s Deli. We’re open today until 7 p.m. for pickup only. We’ll be closed tomorrow for the holiday and reopen Friday at 10 a.m. If you’d like to place an order, please stay on the line."
If you need a more detailed message, split it into parts. Say the closure first, then the special opening hours, then the ordering rules. Do not bury the open hours at the end. That is the detail people care about most.
Checklist before you record it:
- Read it out loud once
- Make sure the date is correct
- Make sure the closing time is exact
- Remove extra words like "just" or "kind of"
- Ask a staff member to call and listen back
If your menu changes during the holiday, update that too. ROAL can answer menu, hours, parking, and address questions from public pages, and it can hand off allergy-sensitive questions, complaints, and manager requests to staff with a summary.
How can I route holiday calls without making customers wait?
Holiday calls usually fall into a few buckets: takeout orders, basic questions, special requests, and messages that need staff. Your phone setup should separate those quickly.
A practical setup looks like this:
- Regular orders go to your live order line
- Holiday-hour questions get answered in the greeting or by the phone host
- Catering, complaint, allergy-sensitive, and manager requests go to staff
- After-hours calls go to voicemail or a fallback message
If you use call forwarding, confirm the code with your carrier or phone system first and test it with a real call. On many landlines and some carriers, 72 forwards all calls and 73 turns it off. On GSM mobile carriers, *21number# often forwards all calls and ##21# turns it off; *61number# forwards unanswered calls and *67number# forwards busy calls. Verizon Wireless uses 72 / 73, and *71 for busy/no-answer forwarding. Business VoIP systems usually set forwarding in the web portal. Codes can vary, so always test.
That matters during holidays because staffing changes fast. If the dining room is closed early, you may want calls to ring differently after a certain time. If you use ROAL, you can forward all calls or only busy/unanswered calls, and turn forwarding off whenever you want. Your restaurant keeps its own number.
What should I do a week before the holiday?
Do the work early, while the schedule is still calm. A holiday-hours update takes less time than answering the same question all day.
Use this prep list:
- Decide holiday open and close times
- Update website hours and holiday banner
- Update Google Maps hours
- Record the phone message
- Tell staff the exact script
- Test the line from your own cell phone
- Set a reminder to remove the holiday message after the date passes
If you use ROAL, you can paste your website, Google Maps link, or "Name, City" into /try and build a test phone host in about two minutes. You can also upload a menu in any format. Owners can test-call it right in the browser with no sign-up needed, which is useful before a holiday rush.
Example: say you expect 40 pickup calls on New Year’s Eve. If your message saves even 30 seconds per caller, that is 20 minutes of staff time. Plug in your own call volume and your own labor rate to see what it means for your shop. The point is not a fancy number. The point is to keep the phone from slowing down the front counter when the line is already busy.
How do I keep holiday hours updated after the rush starts?
Do a same-day check before lunch and again before dinner. Holiday hours often change because of weather, staff shortages, or supply problems. The message should match what is actually happening right now.
A good same-day routine:
- Check the recorded message
- Check the hours on the website
- Check Google Maps hours
- Check the live menu for sold-out items
- Ask staff whether anything changed since opening
If something changes, update the phone message first. That is where the caller is waiting. Then update the website and Google listing.
ROAL has a dashboard with live tickets, call history with transcripts and recordings, a menu editor, hours, FAQs, upsell suggestions, and multi-location menus. That matters on holiday weeks because it gives you one place to see what callers asked and what the kitchen is handling.
A useful owner habit is to review the first few calls after a holiday update. Listen for one thing: did the caller clearly hear the holiday hours, or did they still need to ask? If they still ask, shorten the message and move the open time higher in the script. Keep it plain. Keep it current. Keep it easy for the customer to act on.