Opening a New Restaurant Checklist

While opening a new restaurant is exciting, it’s also stressful. Are you ready to open your doors? Do you have your staff ready? Recipes perfected? Permits approved? Our 25-page Opening a New Restaurant Checklist can guide you through everything you need to do before welcoming customers so nothing slips through the cracks.

This master checklist comes with 11 sub-checklists that cover tasks like evaluating banks and construction insurance providers to hiring and training staff. Want more details before downloading this free Opening a New Restaurant Checklist? Keep reading to gain context around what a restaurant pre-opening checklist is, why you need one, and how to use it.

What’s a Restaurant Pre-Opening Checklist?

A restaurant pre-opening checklist is a list of all of the things you need to do as you open a new restaurant. A comprehensive one will include everything from things you need to do to construct a new restaurant, to last-minute tasks to check off before restaurant grand opening.

Why Do You Need a Checklist for Opening a New Restaurant?

Whether you’re the kind of person who flies by the seat of their pants or you’re very organized, every restaurateur can benefit from a pre-opening checklist. 

Instead of investing time into researching all of the tasks you need to do as you build out, design, and hire for your new restaurant, everything has already been researched and laid out in our Opening a New Restaurant Checklist. So, a checklist will first and foremost save you valuable time you could be spending executing the checklist instead of creating it.

Secondly, and more importantly, a checklist for opening a new restaurant ensures you don’t miss anything. What if you forget to apply for a critical operating license? Or what if you haven’t thought to order bathroom cleaning supplies because you’re preoccupied with ordering kitchen inventory? Our 25-page checklist comes with 11 sub-lists that cover minutiae you may not have thought of.

A checklist also helps you prioritize tasks and set deadlines to turn the overwhelming endeavor of opening a restaurant into an attainable project.

Finally, using a checklist with your team helps you communicate what needs to be done and holds team members accountable for these tasks. By filling out a checklist with deadlines and status updates, and distributing it digitally or giving physical copies to your team, everyone will be aligned on your progress, which will make your goals seem within reach.

How to Use the Opening a New Restaurant Checklist

Follow these steps to make the most of our Opening a New Restaurant Checklist:

1. Fill in your contact information in the form above to download the checklist.
2. Open the checklist and scroll to page 3, which is where the checklist items begin. On each checklist, you’ll find a column for task, target completion date, urgency, person/party responsible, and a completion box.
3. In the “task” column, you’ll find hundreds of tasks throughout the master checklist. Enter your deadline for completing each task in its corresponding “target completion date” column.
4. In the “urgency” column, rank how urgent the task is on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 being the most urgent, and 3 being the least urgent.
5. In the “person/party responsible” column, write the name of the person or team responsible for completing this task. For best results, create a system for notifying these stakeholders so they don’t miss what they’re responsible for in this long list.
6. In the “completed” column, enter “Y” or “N” for “yes” or “no” to indicate the status of the task.

You can also download an Excel version of this list by clicking on the link on page 2 of the checklist. With the spreadsheet, you can easily sort the tasks by responsible party or deadline.

Download the Opening a New Restaurant Checklist

A checklist can make opening a restaurant seem like a less daunting project by breaking it down into smaller, achievable tasks. Download our free Opening a New Restaurant Checklist today to turn your dreams of launching a food business into a reality.