How to Organize a Soft Opening for Your Restaurant

Opening a restaurant is no easy feat and it takes a ton of preparation to be ready to open your doors and host guests. Instead of fully opening your restaurant all of a sudden, you can launch with a soft opening. 

So what goes into planning a soft opening and what are the benefits? In this article, we will help you successfully plan a soft opening and in this case, for a restaurant, however, you can apply this knowledge to a soft opening for different types of businesses. 

What is a soft opening?

A soft opening is basically a trial run for a business. It helps prepare your staff before officially opening to the greater public. A soft opening is typically by invitation only, so you can decide who you would like to attend. Often you will reach out to family and friends to come and support your business, or even local media to help build awareness and generate buzz for your business. 

The best thing about soft openings is being able to gain feedback prior to officially opening. You can hear what your customers think and can make any necessary changes before actually opening. 

What are the benefits of having a soft opening?

There are many benefits to having a soft opening your restaurant or small business, but it really comes down to preparation. 

Working in the restaurant industry is notoriously stressful, especially when you are unprepared for the number of customers you are serving. If you have invited family and friends to your soft opening, they will likely be forgiving if anything goes wrong or if there are long wait times. It’s better to iron out your systems and processes with them, than real customers. 

When done successfully, soft openings can help generate a buzz around your restaurant or business, which in turn will help with future reservations. 

How to organize a soft opening for your restaurant 

Here is some advice to get you started organizing the soft opening for your restaurant. 

Build an invitation list 

Work out who you’d like to invite, like we said earlier, this is usually friends and family, but try and branch out a little bit and invite local business owners as well. This will help you be a part of the local community and grow your business. 

How many days your soft opening will be 

There are different strategies when it comes to soft openings. Some restaurants host a soft opening one night only, while others set aside a few days. There are pros and cons for each type of soft opening. 

On the one hand, if you’re only open one evening, you can build more buzz because it will be very limited, incentivizing people to attend this exclusive event. However, if you choose to host your soft opening over multiple days, you can test out more of your menu. For example, on the first day, you could feature your entrees, the next day showcase your lunch, and the last day highlight your breakfast. 

Create a menu 

You can either create a limited menu or try out your entire menu on your guests during your soft opening. If you are testing out a new menu, we suggest keeping it short so that you can get feedback on those particular dishes. However, offering your full menu will give your staff the opportunity to handle its complexity. 

Determine pricing 

How much are you willing to spend to organize your soft opening? If you decide to give the dinner away for free, it could help in the success of your opening. Or you may decide to offer your food at a discounted price. Whichever you choose, will help create customer loyalty and increase your chances of filling all the seats in your restaurant. 

Collect feedback 

Encourage your guests to be open and honest about their dining experience. Perhaps you can have them fill out a small card at the end of the meal, or let them know they can fill out an online survey at their convenience. 

But the best thing you can do is collect feedback in real-time by asking your waiters to engage in conversation with the guests or have your chef go table to table. 

Choosing your payment processor for your restaurant 

Now that you can open your restaurant with confidence you must decide on your payment processor. When choosing a payment processor, it is important to consider certain things apart from the pricing packages.

Some of the things that can be essential while deciding a payment processor are:

• Enhanced customer service
• Fraud management solutions
• Tools to help business growth
• Flexibility in transactions

Not all payment service providers process every type of transaction. Some may be experts at online processing, accepting card-not-present (CNP) transactions and some may only specialize in in-store payments.

Penni Payments can help improve your customer experience by providing a simple and secure payment processing system for your online checkout. You can reach out to our team for more information and start saving on transactions fees today!