Opening a restaurant or café means running a construction project, a hiring campaign and a menu launch at the same time, usually with less cash than planned. A dated checklist, counted back from opening night, keeps the three moving together.
Before you sign the lease
- Estimate sales for the site from seats, table turns and average check
- Check that rent stays within a share of forecast sales you can carry
- Confirm the licences, permits and inspections you will need, and how long each takes
- Build a capital budget with a contingency line
Know your break-even before you open
Break-even sales = Fixed costs ÷ Contribution margin %
Contribution margin is what is left from each dollar of sales after variable costs such as food, beverage, card fees and hourly labour that moves with volume. In an illustrative café with $18,000 a month of fixed costs (rent, salaried staff, insurance, loan payments) and a 45% contribution margin, break-even is 18,000 ÷ 0.45 = $40,000 a month.
At a $20 average check, that is 2,000 covers a month, or about 67 a day over 30 trading days. If the site cannot realistically do that in its first months, change the plan before you sign.
Three to six months out
- Finalise design, kitchen layout and equipment list; order long-lead items
- Apply for licences and book inspections
- Write the menu and cost every dish on a recipe card
- Set up the point of sale, suppliers and accounts
Six to eight weeks out
- Hire the team in order: kitchen leads first, then front of house
- Write opening and closing checklists for kitchen, bar and floor
- Plan the opening marketing and pre-opening social content
The last two weeks
- Run menu tastings and adjust recipes, then re-cost them
- Hold a soft opening for friends, family and neighbours with a limited menu
- Fix the service problems the soft opening shows before full launch
- Check stock levels, cash float and staff rotas for the first month
The first 90 days
Track daily sales against the break-even line, weekly food and labour cost, and the dishes that sell. Most menus need one round of changes in the first three months, once real sales data replaces the assumptions.
Template
The Restaurant & Café Opening Toolkit covers this in one Excel workbook: concept inputs, a 173-task opening timeline counted back from your opening date, a capital budget, recipe costing, a 12-month ramp and break-even, with charts. It is part of the Food & Leisure Business Startup Bundle, with business plans and calculators for other food concepts.