How we choose.
Every guide should say what it counts and what it leaves out. Here is ours, in full.
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The inclusion rule
A happy hour is published when we can point at the days, the window, and a source that says so. Anything we cannot verify in the last 60 days is removed, not left to rot.
- Where the data comes from
- Venue websites, official Google listings, county health permit filings, state liquor licence records and hyperlocal news. Every row carries the date it was last verified. Where a newsroom reported an opening first, the radar row names them and links back, ARLnow, FFXnow and ALXnow included. We aggregate a signal, we do not take the byline.
- How often it is checked
- The openings radar runs daily. The full happy hour sweep runs weekly. Rows unverified for 60 days expire off the site automatically.
- Chains and groups
- Chains and any brand running more than one location in the region stay in the ledger, because the ledger is a directory and should be complete. They are never featured. A feature slot is for independents.
- What earns a feature
- An exact price, an exact window, and a real photograph. No price, no feature. We do not accept payment for placement and we never have.
- Photography
- Every photograph belongs to the venue pictured and links back to them. We use no stock imagery.
- Corrections
- Happy hours change without notice. If a row is wrong, email editor@novafoodguide.com and it gets re-verified and re-stamped. Venues can write in too: if your happy hour is missing or the terms have changed, tell us and it goes in on the same standard as everyone else.
- What we do not claim
- We do not review food and we do not rank venues by quality. We have not eaten at all 572 of these. This is a verified record of what is offered and when, not a critic's list.
- What is still missing
- 266 of the 572 rows confirm a happy hour without publishing the prices, and 27 do not post a clean window. Usually the terms sit in a photographed menu or a PDF we cannot read. Those rows say so rather than guessing, and the gap is the backlog we work through each week.
- Using what we publish
- Quote a row, cite a number, or link to any page here. That is what it is for. The ledger itself is our own work, rebuilt and re-checked every week, and it is not licensed for bulk reuse or republication. If you want the data behind something you are building, ask.