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Olive Garden restaurants are normally open on Labor Day. Casual dining chains trade through the summer holidays because a Monday off work is a reason to eat out, not a reason to stay home. Hours are set at restaurant level and a holiday schedule can differ from the usual Monday, so check your own location.
Why restaurants and offices follow opposite holiday logic
An office closes on a federal holiday because its staff and its customers are both off. A restaurant faces the reverse. Its customers being off is the entire business case for opening. That is why the holidays that actually close national restaurant chains are the ones where households cook at home, which in practice means Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, and why a September Monday almost never makes that list.
The useful nuance is that a holiday Monday is staffed like a weekend day. That can mean an earlier open, a later close, or in some markets the same hours as the Sunday before rather than the Monday pattern the restaurant normally runs.
Three steps to check your local restaurant
- Find your restaurant through the brand’s own location finder and read the individual restaurant page, since hours live there rather than on the homepage.
- Look at the Google Maps listing for a special hours line covering the holiday. That line overrides the regular weekly hours shown underneath it.
- Call the restaurant directly, especially if you have a group of six or more, because the host can tell you what the waitlist looks like in a way no website can.
Locations that do not set their own hours
Not every restaurant controls its clock. Locations inside shopping malls, attached to hotels, or sited in airports and travel plazas follow the host property’s holiday schedule. A mall that opens late on a holiday Monday pulls its restaurants along with it. If yours is attached to something larger, check the larger thing.
The same applies in reverse near stadiums, fairgrounds and beach districts, where a local event can extend hours well past the printed close.
Getting a table without burning the afternoon
Holiday Mondays do not produce a tidy lunch rush and dinner rush. They produce one long stretch from late morning through early evening, with the worst crunch in the middle of the afternoon when families combine a late lunch with an early dinner. If you want a short wait, aim for the first hour of service or after seven in the evening.
Join the waitlist from your phone before you leave the house, since the clock starts when you join rather than when you arrive. If you are picking up instead, order ahead and take a curbside slot, because the counter queue on a holiday competes with every dine in guest paying at the front.
