Restaurants, Hotels & Cafés with EV Charging
If you're driving an electric car on a longer journey, charging is only one part of the stop. You might also want a proper meal, a coffee, a hotel, somewhere to stretch your legs, or simply a pleasant place to take a break.
That's the idea behind Dine & Charge: helping EV drivers find restaurants, hotels, cafés, pubs and other places where charging is available on site, so the car can charge while you do something useful or enjoyable.
Why combine EV charging with your stop?
Finding a charger is easy enough in many places. Finding a charger at somewhere you'd actually choose to spend time is a different problem.
A charging app can tell you where a charger is. A restaurant website can tell you where to eat. A hotel booking site can tell you where to stay. The difficulty is finding the places where those things come together.
For an EV driver, that can make a big difference. Instead of treating charging as time that has to be endured, you can choose a stop that already fits the journey you wanted to make.
That might mean stopping at a restaurant for lunch, finding a café for coffee and a break, or choosing a hotel where you can arrive, plug in and charge overnight.
Restaurants with EV charging
Restaurants are one of the most useful charging stops because a meal naturally gives you time to leave the car charging.
Rather than stopping at a generic location simply because a rapid charger happens to be there, you can look for a restaurant where the EV charger is actually at the venue. That means your charging stop and your meal are the same stop, rather than two separate parts of the journey.
Dine & Charge is designed to make those places easier to discover. You can browse the database by venue and location, then see the charging information alongside the hospitality information.
Hotels with EV charging
Hotels can be particularly useful for longer journeys and road trips. If you're staying overnight, having charging available at the hotel means you can plug in when you arrive and continue your journey with a fuller battery the next morning.
For some trips, the charger may be the deciding factor. For others, it's simply a useful extra that removes the need to find a separate charging stop before checking in or setting off again.
The important thing is that the charging is part of the venue itself. That's the kind of information Dine & Charge is built around.
Cafés, pubs and other places to stop
Not every journey needs a full meal or an overnight stay. Sometimes you just want a coffee, a snack and ten minutes away from the steering wheel.
That's why the database also includes cafés, pubs, garden centres, visitor attractions and other places where you can spend time while the car charges.
A good charging stop doesn't have to be elaborate. It just needs to be somewhere you actually want to be.
Why on-site charging matters
One of the biggest differences between a useful charging stop and a frustrating one is location.
There is a big difference between a venue with EV charging on site and a venue that happens to have a public charger somewhere nearby. If the charger is in the same car park or on the venue's own site, the experience is much simpler: park, plug in, and head inside.
That is a key part of what Dine & Charge looks for. The aim isn't simply to find a charger a short walk from somewhere to eat. The aim is to find places where the charger and the reason for stopping are together.
Built for all EV drivers
Dine & Charge isn't tied to one car brand or charging network. It is for EV drivers generally, whether you're travelling in a Tesla, Polestar, MG, Kia, Hyundai, BMW, Volkswagen or anything else.
The database focuses on the venue and the charging opportunity, rather than asking you to choose a particular car brand first.
That matters because the best stop for your journey is usually about more than the badge on the car. It's about where you want to go, what you want to do and how long you expect to stop.
Making longer EV journeys easier
One of the biggest changes that comes with an electric car is that charging can become part of the journey rather than a separate task.
Once you're used to planning around charging, the question can change from “Where can I charge?” to “Where would I like to stop?”
That could be a pub in the countryside, a café at a garden centre, a restaurant in a town you're passing through, or a hotel at the end of a day's driving.
The charging still matters. You need to know what chargers are there, how many there are and what sort of charging they provide. But the place around the charger matters too.
Why Dine & Charge exists
Dine & Charge started from a simple problem: finding good places to stop with EV charging on site wasn't always straightforward.
Information was spread across charger maps, venue websites, charging networks and search results. Even when a place looked promising, it wasn't always obvious whether the charger was actually at the venue, what type of charger was available or whether there was somewhere worthwhile to eat or stay.
So the idea was to bring those things together in one place.
The site is designed as a practical resource for EV drivers: somewhere you can search for a venue, see the charging information and decide whether it works for your journey.
It's also intended to become a useful resource for the venues themselves. A pub, restaurant, café, hotel or attraction that has invested in EV charging is offering EV drivers another reason to stop there. Making those places easier to discover can help both sides.
Choose the stop, not just the charger
There will always be journeys where the fastest available charger is exactly what you need. Sometimes you simply want to get charged and get back on the road.
But there are plenty of journeys where the stop can be part of the experience.
Dine & Charge is built around that choice. Find somewhere you want to eat, drink, stay or take a break, then charge while you're there.
Because the best charging stop isn't necessarily the one with the biggest sign or the highest quoted charging speed.
Sometimes it's simply the one where you'd actually like to spend your time.
Enjoy using Dine & Charge, and find somewhere worth stopping for.