Setting Up Opening Hours

DineKit makes it easy to publish your restaurant’s opening hours and keep them accurate everywhere they matter. This guide walks you through setting your weekly hours, handling one-off closures, and displaying a live “open now” badge that both customers and search engines can rely on. If this is your first time in the plugin, start with our getting started guide, then return here.

What the opening hours feature does

The opening hours feature gives you a single place to manage when your venue is open. You set your regular weekly schedule, add holiday overrides for special dates such as bank holidays or seasonal closures, and DineKit does the rest. Once saved, display them with the DineKit Hours block, which shows a live open now / closed status. Behind the scenes, DineKit outputs your hours as LocalBusiness schema so search engines like Google understand when you are open.

Setting your weekly hours

1. In your WordPress admin, open the DineKit menu and choose the Opening Hours settings.
2. For each day of the week, enter your opening and closing times.
3. If a day has more than one service window (a lunch and an evening service), add a second time slot so there is a gap in the middle.
4. Mark any day you are regularly closed as Closed rather than leaving it blank, so the status badge reads correctly.
5. Save your changes.

Adding holiday and special-date overrides

Your weekly schedule covers the normal week, but real venues close for bank holidays, private events and the odd late opening. Holiday overrides handle these without disturbing your regular hours.

1. In the same Opening Hours settings, find the holiday overrides (special dates) section.
2. Add a new override and pick the calendar date it applies to.
3. Set that date to Closed, or enter custom opening and closing times if you are open on different hours.
4. Add a short note if you wish, such as Christmas Day, for your own reference.
5. Repeat for any other special dates, then save.

On the day, an override automatically takes priority over the normal weekly hours, and reverts by itself once the date has passed. Add upcoming bank holidays in advance so nothing catches you out.

Displaying hours with the DineKit Hours block

1. Edit the page or post where you want the hours to appear, such as your contact or home page.
2. Add a new block and search for DineKit Hours.
3. Insert the block where you want the hours listed.
4. Adjust any available display options in the block settings.
5. Update or publish the page.

The block pulls directly from your settings, so whenever you change your hours the page updates too.

The live open-now status

The DineKit Hours block shows a live open now / closed badge based on the current time and your saved schedule, including any override for today. This reassures customers deciding whether to visit or call right now, and stays correct automatically.

The SEO benefit

DineKit outputs your opening hours as LocalBusiness opening-hours schema, a structured format that search engines read directly. This helps Google understand exactly when your business is open and can allow your hours to appear in search results and map listings, complete with an open-or-closed indicator — one of the simplest wins in local SEO.