Budel has 36 places, of which 33 give opening hours, 92 per cent. That is the highest coverage of these fourteen places. Of those, 79 per cent open on a Sunday and 36 per cent work past eleven. A website of their own is held by 75 per cent, and 22 per cent have no online presence.
Why nearly everyone here gives their hours we do not know. The by-law offers no explanation either: closing at one and at the end of the week at two, with opening only at seven, which is on the late side.
Budel lies against the Belgian border and is the largest village of the municipality of Cranendonck, formed on 1 January 1997 out of seven cores.
One of those cores was built for a single firm. In 1892 the Dor brothers began a zinc works here, and the village raised for the workers still carries their name in Budel-Dorplein. The works still stands, with about 485 people, but in recent years it has alternately lain idle and restarted; the last announced restart was in May 2024.
On the table is Brabant food without papers: the protected asparagus of this province comes from another corner, well over a hundred kilometres to the west. The place counts 9,854 residents, of whom 26 per cent are over sixty-five.