I pulled listed weekly opening hours for 683 of the 758 breweries in my ongoing dataset (the rest
didn’t have parseable hours on file) and checked them against Google rating and Untappd check-in volume.
I expected staying open longer to track with more foot traffic, more reviews, or both. It mostly doesn’t:
- The average brewery in this set is open 77.3 hours a week and closed just 0.48 days,
and 70.6 percent of them (482 of 683) are open all seven days. - Weekly hours track with a slightly higher Google rating (r=0.20), but the effect is small: the
quartile open the most hours averages 4.67 stars versus 4.60 for the quartile open the least. That’s a
real gap, just not a big one. - Weekly hours have a negative relationship with Untappd check-in volume (r=-0.17):
breweries open the most hours a week are not the ones getting the most attention online. If anything,
the direction runs the other way. - Some of the highest-rated breweries in the whole dataset are open only a handful of hours a week.
Cycle Brewing Company in St. Petersburg is open four hours total, Saturday 12 to 4pm, and still holds a
perfect 5.0 on Google.
This isn’t a case for closing your taproom early. It’s a reminder that hours open is an operating
cost, not a growth lever, at least based on what shows up in the rating and check-in data across 683 real
brewery listings.
How Many Hours Breweries Actually Stay Open
I parsed Google’s published opening hours for each brewery in the same 758-brewery set I used to build
the original brewery index,
converting each day’s listed range into total weekly hours and counting how many days a week each brewery
reports as closed. 683 breweries had hours specific enough to parse cleanly.
The average brewery in this set runs 77.3 hours a week and takes well under a full day off, 0.48 days
on average. Over 70 percent (482 of 683) report being open every single day of the week, no closed day at
all, which is a demanding schedule for what is, in most cases, a small independent business.
More Hours Buys a Slightly Better Rating, Not a Bigger Audience
There is a real, statistically significant relationship between weekly hours and Google rating
(r=0.20, p<0.001, n=683), just a modest one. Splitting the same 683 breweries into quartiles by hours
open makes the size of the effect clearer:
| Quartile | Weekly hours range | Average Google rating | Breweries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 (fewest hours) | 0 to 66 hrs/week | 4.60 | 172 |
| Q2 | 66.5 to 76 hrs/week | 4.59 | 177 |
| Q3 | 76.5 to 90 hrs/week | 4.58 | 167 |
| Q4 (most hours) | 91 to 141 hrs/week | 4.67 | 167 |
Ratings barely move across the first three quartiles, and only the top quartile, breweries open more
than 91 hours a week, pulls meaningfully ahead, and even then it’s a 0.07 to 0.09 star gap. That’s not
nothing, but it’s a rounding error next to what actually separates a 4.5 brewery from a 3.5 one.
The Busiest Breweries Aren’t the Ones Open the Longest
This is the finding that actually surprised me. If longer hours meant more customer volume, you’d
expect Untappd check-ins to climb alongside weekly hours the same way rating does. Instead, the
relationship runs slightly negative (r=-0.17, p<0.001, n=683). Breweries open the most hours a week
are not pulling in the most attention online, and in this dataset the direction points the other way.
A few of the breweries logging the most weekly hours make the point well:
| Brewery | Location | Weekly hours | Google rating | Google reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carib Brewery USA | Cape Canaveral, FL | 141 | 4.6 | 577 |
| Fairhope Brewing Co. | Fairhope, AL | 137 | 4.7 | 393 |
| Mother’s Brewing Company | Springfield, MO | 135 | 4.8 | 492 |
| Deviate Brewing | Indianapolis, IN | 128 | 4.7 | 325 |
| Boise Brewing | Boise, ID | 128 | 4.8 | 65 |
Carib Brewery USA is open 141 hours a week, essentially around the clock, and sits at a solid 4.6
stars with 577 reviews, a respectable but unremarkable review count for a brewery running that kind of
schedule. Boise Brewing runs 128 hours a week for just 65 Google reviews. Grinding out more open hours
looks like it buys operating expense (staffing, utilities, wear on the space) more reliably than it buys
customers walking through the door.
The Breweries That Prove Less Can Be More
On the other end, a handful of breweries with genuinely limited hours post some of the best ratings in
the entire 758-brewery set:
| Brewery | Location | Weekly hours | Google rating | Google reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cycle Brewing Company | St. Petersburg, FL | 4 | 5.0 | 9 |
| Palmer Brewing Company | Palmer, AK | 63 | 5.0 | 30 |
| Frost Beer Works | Hinesburg, VT | 28 | 4.9 | 147 |
| A Homestead Brew | Valley Springs, SD | 41 | 4.9 | 89 |
| Yuengling Brewery | Pottsville, PA | 48 | 4.9 | 2,997 |
Cycle Brewing Company is the extreme case, and I flagged it in
the original cross-platform index
for the same reason: a small, sour-focused taproom in St. Petersburg that’s only open four hours a week
and still holds a perfect 5.0 on Google. Yuengling Brewery, on the other end of the scale, is a genuine
national name with nearly 3,000 Google reviews, and it runs on a comparatively tight 48-hour week. Neither
one is grinding out a 100-plus-hour schedule to earn its rating.
What This Actually Means for a Brewery Weighing Its Schedule
None of this proves that cutting hours would improve a specific brewery’s rating, the relationship
here is correlational, not causal, and a brewery in a tourist town or a big metro has different foot
traffic realities than one in a small town. But the data is consistent enough across 683 real listings
to say this plainly: hours open is not a lever that reliably buys either a better reputation or more
online attention. If food service, as I found looking at what separates open breweries from closed ones,
matters more than raw hours, then a brewery deciding between staying open longer or investing in a
kitchen, better tap selection, or community events has a real data point suggesting where the second
option is likely to pay off better.
It’s also worth reading this alongside the margin pressure craft breweries are already under:
staffing a brewery for 100-plus hours a week is a real labor cost, and if it isn’t reliably buying more
customers or a better rating, that’s a cost worth questioning on its own terms, separate from whatever
else is squeezing margins right now.
Both Extremes, Side by Side
Check any brewery’s own hours and rating against the extremes shown above: Open the full searchable dataset, sort or filter all 758 breweries by check-ins, rating, social reach, weekly hours, or status.
Get the Raw Data
If you want to check a specific brewery’s hours against its rating and review volume, or build your
own regional comparison, here’s the full dataset as a CSV download:
brewery name and location, operational status, weekly hours open, days closed per week, Google rating and
review count, and Untappd rating and check-in totals, for all 683 breweries with parseable hours.
Explore the Data Interactively
Hover any dot to see the brewery: weekly hours open on the x-axis, Google rating on the y-axis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does staying open more hours improve a brewery’s Google rating?
Only marginally. There’s a statistically real but small positive relationship (r=0.20), and the top
quartile by hours averages 0.07 to 0.09 stars higher than the other three, which barely move relative to
each other.
Do breweries open the most hours get the most customer attention?
No, based on Untappd check-in volume as a proxy for attention, the relationship actually runs slightly
negative (r=-0.17). Breweries open the most hours a week are not the ones with the highest check-in
counts in this dataset.
How many hours a week does the average brewery stay open?
77.3 hours, with an average of just 0.48 closed days a week. 70.6 percent of the 683 breweries checked
report being open all seven days.
How were weekly hours calculated?
By parsing each brewery’s published Google Business hours listing day by day and summing the open
hours across the week, using the same 758-brewery dataset behind
the original brewery index.
683 of 758 had hours specific enough to parse reliably.
Should a brewery cut its hours based on this?
This data shows a correlation, not a guaranteed outcome for any single business, and every brewery’s
foot traffic depends on its own location and market. But it’s a real, dataset-wide signal that hours open
isn’t reliably buying either a better rating or more attention, which is worth weighing against the real
labor and utility cost of staying open longer.
References
- Brewers Association, 2025 industry production report: https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/national-beer-stats/
For the wider closure and rating cross-check this dataset started from, see
the Brewery Index piece, and for what
platform adoption does and doesn’t predict for the same 758 breweries, see this companion piece.
If you want to see who’s actually flagged as at risk right now, I built a risk score for that here.
The same dataset also turned up some genuine quality-over-visibility outliers worth a visit, covered in
the popularity paradox piece,
and the social media side of the same question, whether a brewery’s follower count means anything for
its rating, gets its own look in this piece on Twitter followers and Untappd scores.
If Yuengling’s tight 48-hour week has you curious about a lager instead of a taproom schedule, my
tasting notes on Live Oak Brewing’s Kleines Bier
are a good place to keep exploring.
