Now here's where to go: why we built Enjoy New Brighton

Earlier this week we gave New Brighton its own live train board, so you'd always know whether there was time for one more coffee. Which left the other half of the question. One more coffee where?

It's quarter past eight on a Friday night. The train has just dropped you at New Brighton and you're hungry. Is the bistro on Seabank Road still serving? Does that cafe on Victoria Road open in the evening, or did it shut at three? Is anywhere near the prom pouring a proper pint? You know the town is full of good places. You just don't know which of them are open, right now, a short walk from where you're standing.

The information is out there. It's just scattered. A sign taped to a door. A post on a Facebook page. An Instagram story that vanished yesterday. A listing still showing summer hours in October. Seaside towns keep seaside hours, and they change with the weather, the season and the school holidays. For a visitor, finding out what's open is guesswork. For a local, it's not much better.

That's not a dig at anyone. Independent cafes and pubs are run by people who are busy running cafes and pubs. The big platforms have to cover every town in the country, so they can't know that a place on Victoria Road changed its hours last week. Nobody was looking after the whole picture for New Brighton. So we did.

enjoy.hellonewbrighton.com puts every pub, bar, cafe, restaurant and takeaway in New Brighton on one page. That's 71 places, from the Magazines to Marine Point and up Seabank Road, checked on foot, street by street. Open it and the first thing you see is what's open now and when each place closes, then what's opening soon. Tap a place and it opens on Google Maps, with photos and reviews.

Under that, every place has its own card. What it serves. Its food hygiene rating from the Food Standards Agency. Whether it's dog friendly, has outdoor seats, live music or the sport on. And because this is New Brighton, whether there's street art on the building or just round the corner.

There's a pub crawl too: 19 pubs and bars in one walk, from Hoptimist at the top of the hill, down to the Magazines and along to the Clarence on Albion Street. Nine of them pour real ale. You don't have to do all 19 in one go. Please drink responsibly.

We've been strict about one thing. Opening hours come only from a venue's own website or social pages, from CAMRA, or from us checking in person. If we can't confirm them, the card says so, and it will never tell you a place is closed when it might be open. We'd rather admit we don't know than send you to a locked door.

One more thing. Open it at five in the morning, when the whole town is asleep, and see what happens. We'll leave that one for you to find.

The two boards are built to work together. On trains.hellonewbrighton.com, a box under the next train now tells you how long you've got, suggests a coffee or something to eat, and takes you straight to Enjoy New Brighton. On Enjoy New Brighton, the last train home sits on the same page as the pub crawl, with local taxi numbers in case you miss it. Next to them is a reminder about Ask for Angela, if a night out ever stops feeling right.

One tells you where to go. The other gets you home. Arrive, enjoy, get home safely. That's the whole evening, on two pages that talk to each other.

We're a seaside town. Hospitality is what we do best, and it's how most people meet New Brighton for the first time. A good cafe, a friendly pub, a chippy on the prom. These are the town's front door, and they deserve to be easy to find.

On our board, the independents of the Victoria Quarter and Seabank Road sit alongside the chains at Marine Point, on equal terms. No paid placements. No ads. No sign-up. A family cafe gets the same card as a national brand, and a visitor can find both. That's placemaking: helping people find their way to the places that make a town worth coming back to.

If you run one of these places, the board is yours too. Every card has a link to update your listing, whether that's new hours, a new menu or something we've got wrong. It comes straight to us, and we check it before anything changes on the board. If you work in hospitality or the night-time economy, we'd love your feedback. Tell us what would help.

There's more to come. You know when your train leaves. You know where to eat and drink. Next, we're looking at where to stay the night, for the visitors who don't want to go home at all. And after that, the shops.

Until then, the next time someone asks where's good round here, you'll know. Check what's open. Pick a place. Stay a little longer.

enjoy.hellonewbrighton.com · free, no ads, no sign-up. Save it to your home screen.

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Enjoy New Brighton is an independent community project by New Brighton Creative Futures CIC. Food hygiene ratings come from the Food Standards Agency. Opening hours come from venues' own websites and social pages, CAMRA and our own checks. Train times come from our live train board, powered by National Rail Enquiries via the Rail Data Marketplace.