Opening a restaurant requires "test selling" before actually opening to avoid failure!

If you are thinking of opening a restaurant for the purpose of making it a sustainable business, just thinking about it and investing in it will definitely not work. Because successful restaurants can expand their business and add branches. Just having capital is not enough, you have to do your homework carefully. Whether it's location, target group, restaurant concept, budget, menu, cost, staff, or various systems within the restaurant, etc., you will see that one restaurant has many small details that need to be planned. And once you have gone through all these aspects,

The last period, another 7 days until the store opens. This is one of the most important times that business owners need to prepare for. The 7 days before opening a restaurant is a time when many restaurant owners are excited to start their business, as well as worried about whether everything will go smoothly.

Which can be said that if you are not prepared to open the shop, then when the day comes to actually open the shop, there is a high chance that you will encounter all sorts of problems that will affect the future of the business, such as equipment not being ready, employees not working, ingredients not being complete, customers not receiving impressive service, and posting to complain from the first day the shop opens. Therefore, the last important thing before opening the shop to welcome customers is to "test readiness before opening for sale". Testing readiness before opening for real sales requires doing everything as if you were opening a real shop, except instead of inviting real customers, you will invite acquaintances such as friends and relatives to use the services. During a period, the number of invited customers should be around 30-50% of the total number of seats in order to check the various systems within the shop to see if there is anything that is not yet up to the set standards and if there is anything that needs to be improved, developed or changed so that the service is not interrupted.

Things that need to be checked during testing include:

3. Are the work of service staff in each position performed correctly as planned?
4. In the service process that was set up before testing the system, after testing, is there anything that needs to be changed to make it better?

5. How does each employee perform? Praise those who are good. Give suggestions for improvement.

6. Are the equipment and containers sufficient for actual use?
7. If the shop uses air conditioning, after special guests enter the shop at the same time, is the temperature inside the shop still at an appropriate level?

8. Is the POS system for sending orders to the kitchen working properly? Some people may wonder why they need to check this. This is because many restaurants have problems with the POS system when they first open. They can notify the service provider to fix and adjust the system.
9. Test the kitchen equipment system, gas system, water system, to see if they work normally.
10. Test the lighting and sound systems to see if they are as desired.

In addition to what we need to check ourselves, there are other things that we need to do: Conduct a questionnaire for all guests who come to use the service: What dishes did you order today? What did you like? What did you dislike? Why? What was the atmosphere of the restaurant? What was the service like? In order to analyze and develop improvements from various people's opinions.

When the system testing is complete, the observed and collected data should be used for further correction and improvement. If there are many things that need to be fixed or improved, the recommendation is to conduct a second test run before the actual opening to ensure that all problems have been resolved. A test run is different from a soft opening. Although a soft opening is an informal opening It is a test of various systems, but it will be open to general customers on the normal business days and hours of the store. Everything is like opening a real store, but there may still be some points that are not yet settled.

For example, a menu book may still have menu items that can change. In other words, it is a real shop opening but it is an announcement to customers that during this soft opening period, because the shop is new, there may be some mistakes, but they should only be minor.