Restaurants: specifying opening or kitchen times more closely

[ahornblatt]

Hi there,

my first post, I hope everything is classified correctly.

When dealing with opening times of a restaurant in the internet, for many years I have come across the same problem:

opening times often do not equal times you can order food from the kitchen.

For example, a customer will enter a restaurant which is labeled "open until 23h" at 22:10h and then heavily complain, that the kitchen has allready been closed and they dont take an order from him.

The restaurant may specify "last order 22:00h" on their website, but usually, it is not reflected in google and the likes.

Changing "opening times" to 22:00h is misleading, because guests in the restaurant will not understand, if the have to get up and leave at 22:00h because the place closes - or otherwise not understand, that the place does indeed close at 23:00h. (or at least, it is a problem in germany, where everything has to be maximum "correct", otherwise it may trigger angry discussions).

So my question of suggestion is: can we more closely differentiate between "kitchen hours" and "opening hours" withe the existing markup for restaurants or can we create a new addition to more precisely describe those times?

thanks!

[thadguidry]

+1 I am in general agreement that we should have 2 distinct operational hours, 1 for ordering hours, 1 for restaurant hours.

[MichaelAndrews-RM]

I think that customs differ considerably around the world with regard to expectations about opening times for restaurants. In many countries, opening hours refer to when new customers can arrive and place orders -- they are the same as kitchen hours. If lunch hours are 12:30-3:30 pm, then people can arrive at 3:25 but must quickly place an order, as the last order is at 3:30. The restaurant closes when diners finish or are shooed out. Perhaps some countries have a mandated closing time (lights off), but in many parts of the world closing time is flexible. Having two sets of hours could be confusing or redundant for many.

This problem mostly seems to be an issue for restaurants that don't require reservations, since the restaurant can stop taking reservations that are too close to closing time if they wish.

[thadguidry]

I don't think it would be confusing at all, Michael. "If you have different hours for ordering, then fill in order hours in addition to restaurant hours, otherwise you can just use restaurant hours." Simple and easily translatable.

[ahornblatt]

I think that customs differ considerably around the world with regard to expectations about opening times for restaurants. In many countries, opening hours refer to when new customers can arrive and

It´s clear that this issue differs around the world, even inside any country and in every niche of restaurants, bars, regions etc.

But I can tell from real life experience with customers that a second set of opening times is a must, because it creates heavy problems if customers come to a place for example at 22.20h and are angry because "Google says you are open until 23h!" when they dont get anything to eat or - the other way around, as described above.

So the right solution is to implement a second set of (opening? kitchen?) times and to add a qualifier for this second set!

For example "These ("second") opening times are: kitchen order times/show times/general order times/times when customers are shooed out/service times...?...?" - there are probably more differentiations then I see, but that could be resolved through such a qualifier.

Forgive my bad english.

[ahornblatt]

If you want to go one step further you could even ad another mark saying "strict/flexible/by demand of customers" - for example many nightclubs will probably just run until they decide to shoe out the last customers, other restaurants (especially larger organisations) will probably have very strict closing times etc

[MichaelAndrews-RM]

@ahornblatt -- If we can come up with a simple elegant way to express the "second time" hours, I can support this. I like the brevity of @thadguidry 's suggestion, but don't know if "ordering times" or "kitchen hours" or some other property name is best. Based on some research, I see other use cases for "ordering times":

• times for ordering a book to be retrieved at a library, which can be different from the visiting hours at a library (see for example http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/changes-document-ordering-hours-1-january-2018/)

• ordering times for meal deliveries, which could be unrelated to when the physical restaurant is open to patrons (which might be referred to as service delivery hours).

[ahornblatt]

Based on some research, I see other use cases for "ordering times":

Very good point! I agree with it should be simple and universal, but also must not put local business in such problems as above, when customers are angry for allegedly "wrong" opening times.

Also, for example it can be for events (Event time vs. entering the event, before doors are closed?), small coffee shops which have a bakery for take away AND a coffee shop to sit down with different times (i recently ran into such a thing myself - google said "open from 6h", but on the website they tried to point out "Take away bakery goods from 6h, breakfast in our rooms starting 9h").

Can also be used to differentiate for example in a car station (? to differentiate between opening times for looking around, for asking about a new car sale or for letting the car being repaired.

There are some furniture stores, who open sundays for people to look around, but do not sell anything.

etc

[Bab3lfish]

This not only applies to opening hours vs. ordering times at restaurants. Other commercial places might be open to visitors but their sales force might not be present all the time. Imagine auto dealers that open their exhibition floor on Sundays but the law prevents them from selling their products. This might also apply to furniture stores or galleries.

[thadguidry]

+1 for using "hours" instead of "times" in the property name to help translate well, whatever we decide here.

[vholland]

I vaguely remember this issue coming up before, except the canonical example was the hours a pharmacy counter is opened in within a store, but I can't find that discussion.

Perhaps @danbri remembers?

[RichardWallis]

See issue #7 for the context of the move from the main Schema.org issue tracker to this repository.