The restaurant opening checklist: the last 90 days
Most restaurant openings that go wrong do not go wrong on the night. They go wrong in the ninety days before it, when recruitment, training, trials and systems all have to land at the same time as the build finishes.
We have recruited and opened restaurant, hotel and food retail operations including international openings, and stayed through the initial trading period. This is the sequence that works.
Days 90–60: finalise the offer and lock the operating model
- Freeze the menu and the price list. Late menu changes invalidate training, purchasing and kitchen setup simultaneously.
- Complete the kitchen specification and confirm equipment delivery and commissioning dates.
- Write the operating procedures — opening, closing, cash, bookings, complaints, allergen handling, cleaning.
- Confirm licensing, food safety registration, insurance and any landlord consents.
- Appoint the senior team: head chef, restaurant manager and, where relevant, bar manager.
If the site has an unusual feature — a roof terrace, a large banqueting capability, a high-volume breakfast service — design the operating model for it now rather than improvising after opening. For a lobby or signature restaurant inside a luxury hotel, that includes the moments with nothing to do with food: a guest asking whether the fake Richard Mille on the master of ceremonies' wrist is the real thing, and wanting an answer before the table is booked.
Days 60–30: recruit the full team and start training
- Recruit to the full opening roster, including a margin of relief staff. Openings are lost to absence, not to skill gaps.
- Begin induction: brand, standards, product knowledge, service sequence.
- Train on the actual menu and the actual range, not a generic syllabus.
- Run supplier trials and confirm delivery schedules against real storage capacity.
- Test the EPOS, booking and stock systems end to end — including the reporting you will rely on afterwards.
Days 30–7: trial, taste and rehearse
- Conduct full trial services at increasing covers, including at least one at peak volume.
- Time the pass. Measure how long each dish takes from order to table at peak, and fix what fails.
- Run allergen and food safety drills, and confirm labelling on every item.
- Train front of house on upselling and on handling the two or three situations that will actually occur.
- Complete staff and friends previews, then review and correct before the public arrives.
The final week
- Commission and clean the kitchen; verify extraction, refrigeration temperatures and drainage.
- Stock to opening par levels, with the first week's deliveries confirmed in writing.
- Brief every member of staff on the opening-day plan, their section and who to escalate to.
- Set the reporting you will manage by from day one: sales, covers, average spend, labour cost, food cost.
After opening: the first 30 days decide the business
The initial trading period is when the operating model is either confirmed or quietly abandoned. Review daily for the first month against the numbers you forecast at feasibility stage, and correct one thing at a time — menu, then service, then staffing, then marketing.
We normally stay involved through this period. For The Quince Tree we provided operational and strategic support to the owner and management team for 18 months after opening, and subsequently launched a second site — the second opening being far easier than the first because the standards were already documented.
Documented standards are the deliverable
An opening is only complete when the business can run without the people who opened it. That means operating manuals, training records and a management routine that carries the standard forward through staff turnover. Without documentation, quality drifts back to whatever is most convenient within a year.
Opening soon?
We can take the recruitment, training and opening programme off your hands, or review the plan you already have.