A soft opening is a designated service—or period of services—in which a select number of guests or customers are welcome to try your new restaurant or menu. It is one of the best ways to test out your new restaurant, work out service and menu kinks, and anticipate how you need to operate overall when open. This limited seating and menu offering allows restaurants to find pain points in action, get feedback on the food and service, and give guests and media members an inside look at what to expect from the restaurant.
Below, I share what a soft opening for a restaurant should look like and how to make the most out of yours.
Key Takeaways
- Soft openings are great ways to put any final tweaks into your restaurant operations.
- All restaurants should do a soft opening—as it is the one chance you can tweak the process before the constant rush of business—as close to when it’s ready to open as possible.
- Soft openings should be limited and give your employees the option of a trial run of your live menu.
- Soft openings offer learnings that can help a restaurant succeed in the long term.
What Does ‘Soft Opening’ Mean for a Restaurant?
A soft opening is an invite-only event or period of time in which you serve a set amount of guests to iron out kinks and test the quality of your food, staff, and operations. It is an opportunity to adjust and tweak the way you operate to build a better overall experience for when your restaurant actually does open. The soft opening also helps your staff understand their role in the action, giving them “trial runs” to get into their groove and achieve workflows that are beneficial during live operation.
The goal for your soft opening is not to gain a profit, but rather to gain learnings that will enhance future profits. It is not a short-term attempt to make money but rather a vital and ultimately rare opportunity to control all aspects of service and find out the best ways to improve your process. If you see the soft opening as a tool to achieve sustainable practices for the support of your business, you will approach it in a frame of mind that allows you to make the most of this opportunity.
Finally, a soft opening is the chance to get real-time feedback from guests that can change your menu, beverage offerings, and service style. For example, a guest may suggest a side dish to a main course you may not have thought of or point out a flaw in the way you serve your food that you may not have noticed before. The ability to receive feedback and act on it may be the difference between a restaurant concept that does not work versus one that resonates and becomes popular with many customers. It is from this work that you build a profitable restaurant business.
Restaurant Soft Opening: Steps
A soft opening for a restaurant needs to be planned and thought out accordingly. For any restaurant operator, getting real-time data on how the business will function is invaluable. Below is a list of steps to take to have the most effective soft opening for your restaurant.
Step 1: Determine Your Menu Type/Plan
The first bit of information to figure out when planning your soft opening is the scope of your menu offering. A soft opening may be as simple as executing on your soon-to-be live menu, but you can also choose to offer a limited menu in order to focus on and test each area of your operation. How you plan your menu for the soft opening will dictate how the event will go, so special consideration and thought should go into planning this.
Below are some considerations to follow:
- Volume of food each kitchen station (Garde Manger, Grill, etc.) will prepare
- Amount of portions each dish will have available
- Balance of signature dishes versus new/risky concepts
- Prix fixe menu vs a la carte offerings
- Ability to accommodate dietary restrictions
- Ensuring the dishes chosen reflect areas where performance needs to be tested
The menu type you pick and the dishes you choose to serve will play a major role in the type of data and customer feedback you get from your soft opening. You may wonder why the limited menu option would be so popular. Below is a list of reasons to run with a limited menu:
- It ensures your staff is not overwhelmed and that you can prepare exactly the right amount of food to serve in order to get better feedback.
- It allows the most control of service, giving you the chance to battle test and focus on each station as it delivers food to the customer.
- It gives you the chance to swap in some dishes on different nights, testing what works better to finalize your long-term menu.
The types of dishes you choose, especially if your menu is a la carte, should be a blend of signature dishes you are confident in mixed with new concepts or flavors you want to try out. Customers are coming to your soft opening with the preconceived notion of this experience being new. If your restaurant has been closed and reopened, this can be the perfect time to reinvent your cooking. If this is your first opening, then this opportunity allows you to try out new concepts in a space you have not previously accessed. Focusing on new dishes while ensuring satisfaction with time-tested ones is a benefit of the soft opening that gives you feedback in a low-stakes setting.
For a soft opening, your menu should check all these boxes:
- Offers all cook stations and waitstaff the opportunity to perform with adequate customer orders
- Balances popular dishes against new concepts that help garner feedback
- Amplifies the tone of your brand and represent the type of food future customers can expect
- Can be efficiently executed; your team should be confident that they can put out delicious food for this important event
Noting all of these points and understanding the importance of your soft opening menu is how you can get the best results.
Related: Expert Guide to Menu Development Planning & Design
Step 2: Decide How Long Your Soft Opening Will Last
A soft opening can be for one night, or it can extend over a period of time. A common time frame for a soft opening may be a Friday and a Saturday, as both nights are often when diners will go out to eat the most. This also allows you to invite people during a busier time of the week. While the event may be invite-only, it will be good to note if anyone who wanders by is interested in the restaurant or is trying to see if there are any openings.
Your soft opening should happen before you go live with your restaurant, but it should generally happen a short time before this. That means your restaurant is pretty much ready to go. Your business should be ready to execute a live service. Staff should be trained, food should be ordered, systems should be in place, and your restaurant should be ready to open to the public. I would not encourage a soft opening until the restaurant is ready to go, as it will be as close to real service as possible.
Your soft opening length will depend on your budget and your timeline/need for opening. I have heard of soft openings launching on a Thursday, with actual business starting up the next day on a Friday. This is a very tight turnaround, but if timing and money constraints are an issue, then this is your best course of action. It is always recommended to have a soft launch, as we shared the many ways it can help your restaurant above. Plan how long your launch will be, and be sure to use that time wisely to fine-tune your business.
Step 3: Choose Your Pricing Model
The next important task in your soft opening process is to choose the pricing model. There are usually three ways you can go about this.
Free Soft Opening
The first way is to offer the soft opening for free. Here are some of the reasons why a free soft opening can work:
- A free soft opening removes any price barrier for your guests, offering them the chance to order any items on the menu and enjoy the experience fully.
- You can often solicit good feedback due to a wide range of dishes being selected.
- Free soft openings will garner the most amount of customers to test your business.
Reduced or Ticketed Price Model
The next pricing model would be a reduced price or a ticketed price. This model offers entry at a reduced cost. I personally suggest ticketing, letting guests enter and order food and beverages.
I believe the ticket model is the best method, as it offers your guests a reduced cost while helping you cover some of the cost for the soft opening. Additionally, guests do have some buy-in, so feedback can become more genuine and beneficial. Finally, you can build your menu around the cost of the tickets so that you know the price and framework you need to play in order to not lose too much money on the event.
Full Pricing Model
The last model for pricing would be offering a menu with full pricing and just having customers be invited to the event. The exclusivity of the invite may draw customers in, but you may not find as much success in terms of attendance without some incentive. This keeps the costs of the event low but may hinder your ability to generate enough feedback and get enough service to fine-tune the business before real operations begin. If you are financially tight, this will be your best option. But for the best soft opening model, the reduced cost/one-price ticket is the one I recommend the most.
Step 4: Generate Your Invite List
The next step is figuring out who you will invite to your soft opening. Below is a list of people you should consider adding to your invite list:
- Friends and family of the business and employees
- Purveyors, farmers, and other people you source your food from
- Investors or any donors of the event
- Local, experienced restauranteurs for feedback with an industry perspective
- Food influencers, trusted media members, and other media-facing professionals
- Regulars of other restaurants in your group, if applicable
- Local business owners, community leaders, etc.
A variety of biased and unbiased people is key in a soft opening. You need support mixed with genuine feedback, and this list covers just that. With invites for media, sharing with them that this is a soft opening will let them know that exposure is the goal for the invite. With them, you can gain hype and exposure for a relatively low cost on your end. You may even learn what makes your food attractive to social media, a major strength in today’s food business market.
I am a big fan of inviting vendors, farmers, and other sources of your food, as it is immensely rewarding to see your product made into a delicious dish or beverage. Also, it helps strengthen your bonds with people that you will rely on consistently to ensure your business can operate. Inviting local community leaders is key to building a footprint within your region. Inviting employees’ family and friends is an excellent way for employees to show off their skills to loved ones. A soft opening invite is special, so be sure to treat it like one when you do eventually make your guest list.
Step 5: Fine-tune Your Operations With Lessons Learned
The most important step is using the information you gathered from the soft opening to improve your operation. Consider dishes that were too complicated, did not taste right when being made at scale, or took too long to get to the guest’s table. Note your kitchen layout, and look for ways to reconfigure it to ensure a better flow of service. Notice the amount of food left on plates, take notes on what customers did and did not enjoy, and make changes based on this feedback. I would even encourage an anonymous Google Form to be filled out at the end for honest feedback from those who dined.
For the front-of-house, look at your service style and how customers interact in your live dining room. Does the music need to be turned down, the lighting turned up, or the table map redrawn? Does your service staff know what they are serving, and have they been trained in the best way to describe menu items? Does your staff have a process to ask important questions, such as looking for customer allergens or dietary restrictions? Use this time to ensure that how your food gets to your guests is well-thought-out and highlights the best parts of your business.
The data and anecdotes you take from a soft opening can be the final 5% of adjustment your business needs to ensure it is operating at peak performance. This means a heavy focus on the small details and how every single process operates during this time. Fine-tuning after a soft opening is a great way to hit the ground running when opening to the general public. Be sure to take every possible advantage of this soft opening when you do hold it.
Tips for a Successful Restaurant Soft Opening
Soft openings are exciting and yet can be stressful. Below are my top five tips for a successful soft opening:
- Send Invites Through Different Channels: Sending invites through the mail is a classic way to get people to your soft opening. But sending emails, direct messages on social media sites, and directly calling your guests can be the best and most dynamic ways to get the people you want at your soft opening.
- Offer Nonalcoholic Options: The nonalcoholic space in the food industry is growing more and more popular. That is why I suggest using a soft opening to try out some non-alc options for your guests. You can get feedback and cater to those who want a cocktail without the effects of alcohol.
- Rotate Employees as Guests: A good way to have employees at your restaurant be engaged with your soft opening is to have some of them in as guests. If you have the time over a few days, then getting your employees in as free guests gives them the ability to experience the food they will be cooking while also gaining their expertise-level feedback for the menu and overall service.
- Consider a Soft Opening Branded Sponsor: If possible, a branded sponsor for your soft opening can help cover the cost and generate buzz for your newly opened restaurant. This can be great as it takes away the worry of finances for the event and lets you focus on the feedback you receive from it.
- Don’t Be Afraid to Scrap Dishes: One key to ensuring your soft opening goes well is being able to tweak or do away with what does not work. If a certain dish will have a negative impact on your business, then addressing this in your soft opening is vital versus when you are consistently serving customers day in and day out.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A soft opening is an exciting and challenging time for any restaurateur. Below are some common questions asked about this kind of event.
Last Bite
Soft openings are a great tool in the restaurant industry. They give you the ability to see your business in action, bring in hype, and allow you to make any tweaks or changes to your business before being open to the general public. Soft openings can be a very useful tool if done correctly. With the proper planning and logistics thought out, soft openings become essential for any restaurant looking for long-term success.
