Starting with a wisdom, the first impression can only be made once. It works with restaurants as well. If you open your doors when there are a lot of flaws, you have no acquiring and the waiters don’t know the menu, there’ll be a failure.
You think “I’m running out of time, the rent is high and there are only costs in the nearest future… I have to deal with it somehow and give the work to the employees. And the payroll requires investments.. SO, i should open a place in a test mode. And there may be a discount of 30-50% for the guests.”
On the one hand, this is a kind of a marketing tool. Many people may come at the opening, especially if the city isn’t so big and the project is well developed. But what will happen?
The first impression will be distorted. There certainly will be some details that will create a wrong image of you. And you know what’s next: in our time of social networks all the unpleasant details will be spread around immediately.
A probable excitement of a guest flow won’t let you fix the mistakes and work on the business processes. There may happen to be a vicious circle, that is hard to break.
In your wish of getting profit in a short period you won’t get it in a long one.
You won’t get the potential profit you could have during the first 3 months. The guests will make up their opinion and will have many doubts on whether to come again.
Perfectly, the test opening should be formal and the guests doesn’t have to know it. The staff has to know the menu, the kitchen has to know the recipes, everything in the hall has to be accurate: from greeting the guests to seeing them off.
Have you ever undertaken a test opening? What’s your opinion about it?
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