If you are planning to open a restaurant and aim for your business to last, then making an investment right away isn’t likely to work, because successful restaurants that manage to expand their business and branches need more than money.They also need to thoroughly do their homework.
Whether it is about location, target groups, restaurant concepts, budgets, menu items, cost, employee issues, or various other systems inside the restaurant, it’s easy to see that a single restaurant has lots of little details requiring careful planning.
And if you managed to pass all of those barriers and reach the last 7 days before opening the restaurant, you've reached an important period when restaurants still have to make a lot of preparations. Although the last 7 days before business launching is a time when many restaurant owners are excited, they are also worried about whether or not everything will go smoothly.
We can tell you now that, if you haven't made the preparations for opening your restaurant, there is a high chance you’ll run into countless problems with potential impact on the future of your business such as equipment not being ready, employees not working, ingredient shortages, services failing to impress customers and bad review postings on your first day once you actually open.
So, the last important thing you need to do before launching service and welcoming customers involves running a pre-sales trial.
In running a pre-sales trial, you need to do everything as though you've actually opened your restaurant. The only difference would be that, rather than having actual customers, your customers would consist of people you know like friends and relatives. That said, the number of these invited customers should be about 30-50% of all your available seats, so you can test your systems and see if anything falls short of your standard and whether or not there is something you need to develop, improve or change in order to ensure seamless service provision.
Here are the things you need to check during a trial:
1. Are the flavors, appearances and quantities of the foods consistent with your restaurant's standards? 2. Is the preparation time okay?3. Are service employees in each position performing correctly as planned? 4. For the services planned before system testing, are there things you need to change to make improvement now that you've tested your system?
5. How is each employee functioning? Compliment the ones who are doing well and give recommendations to people who still need to improve.
6. Do you have enough equipment and utensils for actual use? 7. If your restaurant has air conditioning, is the temperature inside the restaurant still comfortable after lots of special guests arrive at the same time?
8. Can your POS for sending orders to the kitchen function normally? Some people wonder why they have to test this. Well, it's because lots of restaurants often struggle with their POSs when they first open up. If you run into a problem, you'll be able to call in the service provider to properly correct the system. 9. In testing the equipment in the kitchen, gas system and water system, are they all working normally? 10. In testing your light and sound systems, are they working the way they should? In addition to performing these checks, you also have to create a questionnaire for the guests you've invited to ask them what menu items they liked or disliked and why. They also need to tell you what they think about the restaurant's atmosphere and services. That way, you’ll be able to analyze their opinions and make improvements. Once you finish testing your system, you need to use the information obtained during your observation and collection to make additional improvements. If there is a lot that needs to be improved, we recommend that you run a second trial before the actual launching to ensure that all of your problems are properly corrected beforehand.
A trial is different from a soft opening. Although a soft opening is an unofficial opening of the restaurant in which the systems are tested, it consists of serving actual customers during the restaurant's operating days and hours. They are actual launches, but might take place when certain aspects still haven't been settled yet.
For example, menus might still experience some changes, or the restaurant might be actually opened, but customers are informed that some mistakes, albeit minor ones, might be expected during the soft opening.
