50 things to get right before your first service.
A free, practical pre-opening checklist for independent restaurants, bars, and cafés built from thirty years of operational experience across the UK and Spain.
Most of the mistakes that damage a hospitality business in its first year happen before it opens.
Not during service. Not because of a difficult customer, a bad review, or an unexpected cost. Before any of that – in the planning stage, in the lease negotiation, in the menu costing, in the recruitment process, in the financial model. In the decisions that feel preliminary but turn out to be foundational.
The problem is that nobody hands you a map when you decide to open a restaurant, a bar, or a café. You find out what you didn't know by encountering the consequences of not knowing it.
Sometimes that's a manageable lesson. Sometimes it's an expensive one.
The Independent Operator's Pre-Opening Checklist won't replace experience. But it will tell you what questions to ask, what decisions to make, and what to have in place before your first paying guest walks through the door — across ten areas, fifty items, and every stage of the pre-opening journey.
It is market neutral, designed to work whether you're opening in London or Málaga, a neighbourhood café or a fine dining restaurant, your first venue or your third. And it's free, because the best thing that can happen to an independent hospitality business is that its owner starts with clarity rather than discovering what they missed after the fact.
What’s Covered
01 Concept & Positioning:
Testing your concept against the market. Defining your customer. Establishing your brand identity before you open.
02 Legal & Business Setup:
Business structure, food safety registration, licences and permits, lease legal advice, banking and accounting.
03 Premises & Lease:
Neighbourhood research, structural surveys, the full cost of a premises, lease negotiation, and permitted use.
04 Finance & Funding:
Financial modelling, cash buffers, pre-opening costs, funding structures, and professional relationships.
05 Menu & Product:
Menu engineering for profitability, focus, correct pricing, recipe documentation, and pre-opening trials.
06 Suppliers & Procurement:
Backup suppliers, credit terms, relationship building, ordering systems, and allergen compliance.
07 Team & Staffing:
Hiring for attitude, recruitment timelines, onboarding programmes, employment obligations, and management structure.
08 Operations & Systems:
Service standards, opening and closing procedures, food safety management, layout for flow, and soft opening.
09 Technology:
POS selection, reservations, inventory management, payment infrastructure, website and Google Business Profile.
10 Marketing & Pre-Launch:
Social media pre-launch, email list building, launch strategy, review generation, and planning for quiet periods.
Who this is for
The Pre-Opening Checklist is designed for:
First-time operators in the planning or pre-opening stage
Experienced operators opening a new concept or a new site
Anyone who wants to pressure-test their preparation before committing
If you are already trading and looking for clarity on what's not working, the Hospitality Self-Assessment is the right starting point.
If you want an expert to work through it with you, the Hospitality Health Check is the next step.
Built from experience, not theory.
The checklist was developed by Benjamin Sawyer, founder of Atelier Sawyer and a hospitality operator with thirty years of hands-on experience across six venues in the UK and Spain. He started in a pot wash at fifteen and has opened venues at every level of the market, from community pubs to fine dining. The checklist covers what he has learned from doing it, including the mistakes.