The hour before service decides how the service goes. A restaurant that opens properly absorbs a busy night; one that opens badly spends the whole service catching up on things that should have been done at four o'clock.
A checklist is unglamorous and it is the difference.
Why it should be written down
Not because your team does not know what to do. Because on the day somebody is off, somebody is new, or somebody is distracted, the thing that gets missed is always the thing nobody remembered was theirs.
A written checklist also makes the handover honest. "Everything's done" means something specific when there is a list, and nothing at all when there is not.
Front of house, before doors
Reservations reviewed. Who is coming, what the party sizes are, any notes — allergies, birthdays, regulars, anyone who needs a specific table. Five minutes, and it prevents the worst moments of the night.
Floor plan set for the actual bookings, not the default layout. If there is a party of eight at seven, the tables need to be together before seven, not at seven.
Tables checked. Level, clean, set, nothing sticky. Sit in a couple of them.
Bathrooms checked and stocked. The single most reliable indicator guests use to judge a kitchen they cannot see.
The till is ready. Float counted, card machines charged and connected, receipt paper in.
Specials known. Every server should be able to describe them and say what is in them — including the allergens — without checking.
Music and lighting set for the start of service rather than for the cleaning.
Kitchen, before service
Prep list checked against the bookings. Not against a normal day.
Temperatures logged. Fridges, freezers, hot holding. This is a food-safety obligation with record-keeping requirements that vary by jurisdiction, and the log is what proves it was done.
Anything 86'd communicated to the floor before doors. A server finding out at the table is a bad moment that was entirely preventable.
Stations set and stocked for the expected volume.
Kitchen printers or screens tested with a real ticket, not by assuming.
The five-minute pre-service brief
Worth doing every single day, and the first thing dropped when things are busy.
- Covers booked, and the shape of the night
- Specials, and what is in them
- Anything unavailable
- Anything unusual — a large party, a VIP, a review, a delivery mid-service
- One thing to focus on
Five minutes. It is the highest-return five minutes in the building.
The part almost every checklist is missing
Is the phone covered?
The hour before service is when reservations for tonight arrive, and it is exactly when everybody is prepping. So a restaurant with a perfect opening checklist still loses the covers that rang at half past four while the host was setting the floor.
It belongs on the list as an explicit item: who is answering the phone between now and doors, and what happens to a call nobody reaches. If the honest answer is voicemail, that is a decision — just make it a decision rather than a default. What a restaurant phone setup actually has to do covers the options.
Closing matters too, because it sets up opening
A bad close guarantees a bad open. The closing list should leave the room ready rather than merely clean:
- Tables reset for tomorrow, not just wiped
- Float counted and secured, day closed on the POS
- Prep list written for tomorrow based on tomorrow's bookings
- Anything running low flagged for the order
- Fridges checked, temperatures logged
- Rubbish out, floors done, nothing left to do in the morning
The test of a close is whether the opening shift can start on the prep list instead of on yesterday's mess.
Making it stick
Keep it short enough to actually use. Twelve items done every day beats forty items done never.
Assign each item to a role, not a person, so it survives the rota.
Have it signed off, physically or in whatever system you use. Not for blame — so the handover is real.
Review it quarterly. Items stop being relevant, and new ones earn their place. A checklist nobody has changed in two years is a checklist people have stopped reading.