What a restaurant holiday hours message should say
A holiday hours message has one job: stop a guest from showing up to a locked door, or from assuming you are closed when you are open. The best ones are boring in the best way. They state the date, the exact hours (or the closure), and one action the guest can take right now.
A complete holiday hours message answers three questions in the first line:
- Which day? Name the holiday and the date, not just “the holidays.”
- What are the hours? Give the open and close time, or say plainly that you are closed.
- What should I do? Reserve, join the waitlist, order ahead, or just “see you then.”
Everything after that is flavor. The mistake operators make is burying the times under a paragraph of warm wishes. On a phone screen, the guest sees the greeting, gets bored, and calls the host stand anyway, which is exactly the call you were trying to prevent.
The timing that actually works
Send your first holiday hours notice 5 to 7 days out. That is far enough ahead that a guest can change a plan, close enough that they will not forget. For closures or sharply reduced hours, add a same-day reminder the morning of the holiday. People genuinely forget that their neighborhood spot is closed on Christmas Day until they are standing outside in the cold.
A practical cadence for a major holiday:
- Seven days out: the full notice by email, with the menu and a reservation or waitlist link.
- Two days out: a short SMS or WhatsApp reminder with just the date and hours.
- Morning of (closures or odd hours only): a one-line “heads up, we close at 3pm today” alert.
Do not over-send. Three touches across a week is fine; a daily countdown will burn through your opt-in list and your message allowance. If you are on the Basic plan with 500 messages a month, a careless holiday blast can eat most of it in an afternoon.
SMS holiday hours message examples
Keep SMS under 160 characters so it sends as one segment. Lead with your name so the guest knows who is texting before they read a word.
Closed for the day:
“Marlowe’s: We’re closed Thanksgiving Thu Nov 27 so our team can be with family. Back Fri Nov 28 at 5pm. Happy Thanksgiving!”
Early close:
“Bar Vesta: Heads up, we close at 4pm today (Dec 24). Open regular hours Dec 26. Reply STOP to opt out.”
Open special hours, walk-ins welcome:
“Pho Linh: Open New Year’s Day 11am-8pm. Walk-ins welcome, or join the line from your phone: [link]”
Holiday with reservations:
“Trattoria Sera: Valentine’s Day seatings 5-9pm are filling up. Book your table: [link]”
Notice the opt-out language (“Reply STOP”) on the marketing-flavored examples. A pure operational alert to an opted-in guest is lower risk, but adding a clear opt-out keeps you on the right side of carrier rules and guest trust.
WhatsApp holiday hours message examples
WhatsApp has no real length limit and renders images and formatting, so it is the right channel for richer holiday messages, especially for guests in Brazil, Mexico, Spain and the wider LatAm market where WhatsApp is the default. If you are weighing channels, our SMS vs WhatsApp guest messaging breakdown covers the tradeoffs.
Festive closure:
“Hi from Casa Verde! We’ll be closed Dec 25 and 26 for the holidays and reopen Dec 27 at noon. Thank you for a wonderful year. We can’t wait to cook for you again. Warmest wishes from the whole team.”
Special menu with hours:
“Happy holidays from Olive & Ash! On New Year’s Eve we’re open 5pm to 1am with a special 5-course tasting menu. Tables are limited and going fast. Reply here or tap to reserve: [link]”
Because WhatsApp is two-way, guests reply right inside the thread to ask about parking, dietary swaps or party size. Make sure whatever tool you use keeps those replies in the same conversation rather than scattering them.
Email holiday hours message examples
Email is where the full picture lives: every holiday in the season, the special menus, the reservation links, the gift-card pitch. Put the dates and hours near the top in a short list so a skimmer gets the answer without scrolling.
Subject line: “Our holiday hours (and a few special menus)”
Body opening:
“Hi [first name], here’s when we’re open over the holidays so you can plan ahead:
- Dec 24 (Christmas Eve): 11am-4pm
- Dec 25 (Christmas Day): Closed
- Dec 31 (New Year’s Eve): 5pm-1am, special tasting menu
- Jan 1 (New Year’s Day): Closed
Reserve a table or join the waitlist anytime from your phone.”
End every marketing email with a working unsubscribe link. It is required, and it protects your sender reputation so your genuinely useful messages keep landing in the inbox.
How to send these from your waitlist guest list
This is where a waitlist tool earns its keep. Every guest who has joined your line and opted in to updates is already a clean, consented contact. Instead of exporting a CSV and wrestling with a separate email blaster, you message the people you already serve, from the same system that runs your door.
With StoveOps you can:
- Reach opted-in guests by SMS, WhatsApp or email from one guest list, so the holiday notice goes out on the channel each guest prefers.
- Keep the data yours. StoveOps is not a discovery marketplace. The guest relationship and contact list belong to the restaurant, which matters when you want to send a holiday message without paying a platform to reach your own diners.
- Handle two-way replies without tying up the host stand. Guests reply to confirm or ask a question, and the host sees it in the same thread.
- Track who opened and clicked on Professional and above, with UTM tagging and campaigns, so you learn which holiday message actually drove reservations.
If you run several locations, the multi-location waitlist keeps each store’s hours and guest list separate, so the downtown spot’s “closed Dec 25” message does not go to the airport location’s guests who are open.
A five-minute setup before the holiday rush
You do not need a marketing team to send a clean holiday notice. The flow is short:
- Write three versions: a 160-character SMS, a richer WhatsApp message, and a fuller email. Same facts, different length.
- Segment by channel preference. Send SMS to the phone-first crowd, WhatsApp where guests favor it, email for the full lineup.
- Schedule the first send for 7 days out and a short reminder for two days out.
- Mirror the wording on Google Business Profile and Instagram so every place a guest checks agrees.
- Watch the replies in one thread the day of, so a “are you open?” question gets a one-tap answer instead of a phone call during prep.
Run that once and you have a reusable template for every holiday on the calendar. Most operators build it on the 7-day trial and never touch a separate email tool again.
Holiday hours mistakes that cost you covers
A few patterns turn a routine notice into lost revenue and annoyed guests:
- Forgetting Google Business Profile. Most diners check Google before they check their texts. If your holiday hours are wrong there, the message you texted does not save you. Update Google first, then send.
- Vague language. “Modified holiday hours” tells a guest nothing. State the numbers.
- Sending to a non-consented list. Texting people who never opted in is the fastest way to get reported and to lose carrier deliverability for everyone on your list.
- No plan for the rush after a closure. The day you reopen after a holiday is often slammed. A digital waitlist keeps the door calm when everyone shows up at once. It also helps with the no-show problem on big reservation nights like New Year’s Eve.
When a different tool fits better
Be honest about your needs. If your holiday strategy is built entirely around prepaid, ticketed experiences, a New Year’s tasting menu sold like event tickets, a platform built for prepaid experiences may serve that one use case better than a waitlist tool. If you need diner discovery to fill a brand-new room during the holidays, a marketplace gets you in front of strangers in a way owned messaging cannot.
StoveOps is the right fit when you already have guests, want to own that relationship, and need a fast, self-serve way to message them about hours, waits and reservations from the same system that runs your front of house. It runs beside your POS and checkout stack, not instead of it.
Get your holiday messages out the door
Holiday hours are predictable, so make the messaging predictable too: clear dates, exact times, one action, sent 5 to 7 days out to guests who opted in, mirrored on Google and social. Then keep the door calm on the busy reopen day.
You can set this up during a real service on the 7-day free trial. Send a holiday notice to your opted-in guests, watch the replies land in one thread, and see how many walk-ins join the line from their phones instead of crowding the host stand. Questions on setup? Reach the team at contact@stoveops.com.