Everything that has to be right before the doors open.

Most venues open with the fit-out finished and the marketing half-built. The build gets six months of attention and a project manager. The brand, the menu pricing, the booking system and the launch get whatever is left in the fortnight before opening, usually from someone who is already doing three other jobs. It shows.

The first six weeks of trade are the most expensive marketing you will ever run. Everyone who walks in during that window forms a view and tells other people about it, and almost none of that is planned. The work below is about making that window deliberate.

Before the lease is signed

The cheapest problem to fix is the one you find before you commit to a term. A read on the site, the trade area, the competition already operating there, and whether the concept has a market at the price you need to charge. Occasionally the answer is that it does not, and that conversation is worth more than everything that follows it.

The unglamorous part

Menu costing and pricing to an actual margin rather than a guess. POS, bookings and ordering platforms chosen on what they cost and what they do, not on which rep called first. Supplier accounts opened. Staff found. Google Business Profile claimed and verified early, because a venue that opens without its listing live loses its first month of local search to nothing at all.

None of this is exciting and all of it is the difference between a venue that trades well from week one and a venue that spends its first year correcting things.

Launch

A soft opening that is genuinely soft, so the kitchen and the floor can find their rhythm in front of a forgiving room. Then locals first, media second. Locals are the ones who come back in August. A launch built entirely for coverage gets you a busy fortnight and an empty autumn.

After you open

Ninety days in, we look at the numbers against the plan. Menu mix, average spend, labour, marketing spend, and what the reviews are actually saying. Pricing and promotion get adjusted on real trading data instead of the assumptions we started with.