Which hours should a café put on Google? Sets of hours, More hours and seasons, by Google’s guidelines

If a restaurant has “multiple sets of hours”, Google’s guidelines say to use the hours when diners can sit down and dine in, or failing that, takeout hours. They add that More hours are for specific services and should generally be a subset of your primary hours. For a seasonal business, the guidelines say to set regular hours during the season and that you can mark the business temporarily closed off-season. Google writes its dine-in, then takeout order for restaurants. Applying that order to a café is our reading, not Google’s wording.

Which hours does Google ask a restaurant to list?

If a restaurant has multiple sets of hours, Google asks it to use its dine-in hours first. The guidelines open the section with the condition, “If your business has multiple sets of hours”, and then say: “Use the hours when diners can sit down and dine in your restaurant. Otherwise, use takeout hours. If neither of those is possible, use drive-through hours, or, as a last resort, delivery hours.”

So the order is dine in, then takeout, then drive-through, then delivery. This sits in the “Sets of hours” section of Google Business Profile Help, “Guidelines for representing your business on Google”. That section also covers other industries, each with its own line.

Does that apply to a café?

Google does not say so in the text we read. Its line is about “Restaurants”, and we have not seen it call a café a restaurant. Our reading: a café that serves people at tables is close enough to the case the line describes that the same order makes sense.

An example, made up: a café whose seating closes at 4 but whose takeaway hatch runs to 5. By the Restaurants line, the dine-in hours come first, so 4 is the main closing time. If you are unsure, the guidelines page is the place to check.

What are More hours, and how should they relate to the main hours?

More hours are a way to show times for particular services, and Google says they should generally sit within your primary hours. The guidelines say: “To highlight times for specific services, you can also set More hours.” They continue: “In general, you should set More hours as a subset of your primary hours.”

Our reading, with the made-up café above: a hatch open later than the dine-in close falls outside Google’s “In general, you should set More hours as a subset of your primary hours” line. That line begins “In general”, so we would not treat it as a hard rule. Check the Business Profile Help page for the current wording before you decide.

What should a seasonal café do?

A seasonal café should set its regular hours for the months it is open and can mark itself temporarily closed in the off-season. The guidelines give four lines for seasonal hours:

• “During the season your business is open, set your regular hours of operation. You may set special hours for holidays, temporary closures, or other events.”
• “You can also indicate that your business is open only for a specific seasonal period in your business description.”
• “During off-season, you can mark your business as temporarily closed.”
• “Set your regular business hours when your business reopens.”

Our reading: a café by the sea that opens at Easter and shuts in October would use the first line for the summer and the third for the winter. That example is made up.

And holidays?

Google lets you set special hours for holidays. Our article on bank holiday hours on Google for a café in Ireland covers them.

And the hours on the café’s own website?

The hours on your own website are a separate matter from the Business Profile, and this article is about the profile. Our free check reads hours from the café’s website, not from Google. It lists this item: “Opening hours on your site. Your hours written on the home page, the menu page or a visit or contact page, a day next to a time. Better still, as schema.org data in the page, so "is it open now?" gets a real answer instead of a guess.”

Sources

• Google Business Profile Help, Guidelines for representing your business on Google, the “Sets of hours” and “Seasonal hours” sections, read 2 November 2026.
• Cupán Studio, Is my café website AI ready? (cupanstudio.com/check), read 6 November 2026.

This is a summary of the Google Business Profile Help guidelines read on 2 November 2026, not legal advice. The café examples are ours and are made up. Cupán Studio builds websites for cafés in Ireland.