In a world of rapidly shifting executive orders and ABC guidance around hospitality openings, operations, and hours, the Brewers Association is working with state guilds to tell the story of breweries and their businesses. As one piece in this process, we recently compiled a list of closing times for as many breweries as we were able, using the Google Maps API and our brewery database. I thought the aggregated data might be interesting to breweries, so I’m presenting it here. Keep in mind that we don’t definitively know how many of these hours might be different from pre-COVID, or if all breweries are still operating under the hours listed via Google. This includes all brewery types.
Closing Time Data
The data set: Contains closing time by day for every brewery with those times listed in their Google Places record. This covers the vast majority of breweries that are open to the public (7,000+ total records).
Days Open
Here is a table listing the number of closing records by day as a percentage of Saturday (the day with the most breweries open). So for every brewery that is open Saturday, only 1 in 2 is open Monday (the least popular day to be open).
| Day of the Week | Percentage of Saturday |
|---|---|
| Sunday | 94.7% |
| Monday | 49.7% |
| Tuesday | 64.6% |
| Wednesday | 84.3% |
| Thursday | 95.0% |
| Friday | 94.1% |
| Saturday | 100.0% |
Closing Time
The median closing time for breweries across the data set was 9:00 PM. The only days where that wasn’t the median were Sunday (8:00 PM) and Saturday (10:00 PM). Average closing times were similar to the median for all days.
Here’s a table of closing times by day and the percentage of breweries that have their closing hour during that time. Across all days, 87.2% of breweries close at 10:00 PM or earlier.
| Closing Time | Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Noon or earlier | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| 12:01-1:00 PM | 0.1% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| 1:01-2:00 PM | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| 2:01-3:00 PM | 0.8% | 0.5% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.5% |
| 3:01-4:00 PM | 1.8% | 0.6% | 0.5% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.8% |
| 4:01-5:00 PM | 5.8% | 2.4% | 2.1% | 1.8% | 1.4% | 1.3% | 2% |
| 5:01-6:00 PM | 14.7% | 4.1% | 3.7% | 3.7% | 3.4% | 3.4% | 3.9% |
| 6:01-7:00 PM | 12.2% | 7.2% | 7.1% | 7.6% | 7.7% | 6.6% | 5.2% |
| 7:01-8:00 PM | 24.1% | 20.7% | 19.8% | 20.3% | 20.4% | 14.8% | 13.8% |
| 8:01-9:00 PM | 17.5% | 30.2% | 31.2% | 31.6% | 31.3% | 23.8% | 20.9% |
| 9:01-10:00 PM | 10.3% | 25.4% | 26.7% | 26.7% | 26.7% | 31.7% | 29.4% |
| 10:01-11:00 PM | 1.9% | 5% | 5% | 4.6% | 5.5% | 14% | 13.3% |
| 11:01-12:00 PM | 7.8% | 2.1% | 2% | 1.8% | 1.8% | 2.5% | 7.5% |
| 12:01 PM-1:00 AM | 1.2% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.4% | 1.1% |
| 1:01-2:00 AM (or later) | 1.2% | 0.9% | 0.8% | 0.6% | 0.6% | 0.7% | 1.1% |
Here is that data in graphical form (only includes breweries that are open that day):
As you can see, the distributions of closing times are fairly similar for Monday through Thursday, with closing hours shifted slightly later on Saturday, and earlier on Sunday (some of this may be due to regulations).
I didn’t query opening times or total time open for this project, but I’m happy to make a more complete aggregated data set available or do additional analysis if there is member interest (aka email me if there’s a question that this will help you answer!).
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