When Are Dutch Restaurants and Bars Closed During the Week?

Most Dutch restaurants and bars close at least one day a week. Monday is the usual choice, but not the only one, and the pattern changes with the type of venue and the part of the country. To get a clear picture, we looked at the opening hours of 38,339 food and drink venues in the Roamler Foodservice Database.

Scope: 38,339 Dutch food and drink venues in the Roamler Foodservice Database: restaurants, fast-food outlets, bars and cafés, lunchrooms, coffee bars, ice cream parlours and nightclubs. A venue counts as closed on a given day when its registered opening hours show it as closed that day.

Closing Days Through the Week

The Dutch Foodservice week starts slowly. More than a third of venues are closed on Monday, and about a quarter are still closed on Tuesday. From Wednesday, more and more venues open, and by Friday almost all of them are open.

Saturday is one of the busiest days of the week. On Sunday, closures go up again, but only slightly: around one venue in ten is closed.

Share of Dutch food and drink venues closed, by day of the week. Source: Roamler Foodservice Database.

How Many Days Venues Are Open

Almost half of all venues are open every day of the week: 47% are open seven days a week. 29% close one day a week, 17% close two days, and 8% close three days or more.

Among venues that close one day a week, most choose Monday (59%). Tuesday (20%) and Sunday (13%) follow. When a venue closes two days, the most common combination is Monday and Tuesday: 16% of all venues are closed on both.

Differences Between Types of Venue

The type of venue makes a big difference.

Share of venues closed by day, and share open seven days a week, by type of venue. Source: Roamler Foodservice Database.

Restaurants and bars are the main reason the week starts so quietly. Almost half of restaurants are closed on Monday, and many stay closed on Tuesday. For bars and cafés, Tuesday is almost as common a closing day as Monday.

Lunchrooms and coffee bars work to a different rhythm. They mainly serve customers during the day and during the working week, and for them Sunday is the day off more often than Tuesday.

At the other end, pizza outlets, kebab outlets and ice cream parlours are mostly open every day. Nightclubs follow their own pattern: most are closed during the week and open at the weekend.

Differences Between Provinces

In every province, Monday is the most common closing day. But the country splits into two groups.

In the north, east and south of the country, venues close more often. In these eight provinces, 40% to 48% of venues are closed on Monday and around 30% on Tuesday, and only 36% to 39% are open every day.

In the Randstad provinces and Flevoland, it is the other way round. Venues close less often early in the week, and around half are open every day: 60% in North Holland, and just over half in South Holland and Flevoland. North Holland goes furthest, mainly because of Amsterdam, where 70% of venues are open seven days a week and only 18% are closed on Monday. In the rest of North Holland, the Monday share is 35%, close to the national figure.

Two other points stand out on the map. Zeeland has more midweek closures than any other province, with one venue in five closed on Wednesday, twice the national share. And Sunday looks much the same everywhere, with 10% to 14% of venues closed in every province.

What This Means for Brands

For brands and wholesalers working with Dutch Foodservice venues, closing days affect deliveries, route planning and sales visits. Monday is the obvious day to avoid. Outside the Randstad, Tuesday is often not much better.

The type of venue matters as much as the region. A visit to a restaurant or bar early in the week has a good chance of finding it closed, while a pizza or kebab outlet will almost always be open. For lunchrooms and coffee bars, Sunday is the day to avoid.