Most opening problems are designed in long before the first guest arrives. These seven come up again and again, in hotel outlets and in independent venues.
1. Signing the lease before running the numbers. Rent is a fixed cost you live with for years. Build a simple model first: realistic covers by daypart, a realistic average spend, and target food, beverage and labour costs. If the venue only works on optimistic covers, the site is wrong or the concept is.
2. Designing the room before the menu. The kitchen and bar must be able to produce the menu at peak. When the menu is written after the kitchen is built, chefs end up redesigning dishes around missing equipment and space.
3. No critical path. Licences, fit-out, equipment lead times, recruitment, training and soft opening depend on each other. A one-page critical path with owners and dates shows early which delay will move the opening.
4. Hiring too late. Teams need time to train together before opening. Recruiting key managers late leaves no time for SOPs, tastings and mock services.
5. Skipping mock services. A friends-and-family service with real tickets shows where the floor, pass and bar break down, while mistakes are still cheap.
6. An uncosted menu. Every dish and drink needs a recipe card and a cost before the menu is printed. Otherwise the gross margin is unknown until the first month's P&L, and by then it is expensive to fix.
7. No plan for day 31. Launch marketing ends and the regulars have to take over. Plan the first 90 days in advance: guest feedback, menu adjustments, local partnerships and a weekly KPI review.
FAN Hospitality Consulting · 方叙酒店餐饮咨询. Founded by Nil Shrestha.
多数开业问题在第一位客人进门前就已埋下：先算账再签约、先定菜单再设计厨房、制定关键路径、提前招聘、模拟营业、菜单成本核算，以及开业30天后的经营计划。
（中文全文编写中）