im still about a month from opening but i go over in my head every day what is going to happen and what needs to be done the week and day before. can you give some input what your first day like? thanks
the million dollar question!! 
No matter what you do things will almost certainly happen that you didn’t plan on. Some things won’t have arrived, some things won’t work, something you were waiting for to arrive weeks before will suddenly arrive at the most inappropriate time! Business will be busier/quieter than you expected, and as a result you will have too many/not enough staff and supplies.
Staff will:
a) not turn up
b) forget things you told them
c) loose any degree of common sense and the ability to make any judgement at all without asking you - “how do I open this can?”
d) someone you thought would be good will be rubbish and no doubt someone you thought would be rubbish will prove to become you best player!
You’ll run out of some stock really quickly and throw away/waste other stock (its heartbreaking!)
Or it will all go really smoothly with no problems at all - unlikely :roll:
Advice? -
- keep calm,
- be prepared to work very very long hours,
- be prepared to loose some money whilst you learn and get a feel for how busy/quiet you’ll be,
- BUT keep smiling and don’t skimp on quality and service EVER!
Hope this helps
Open quietly for a week or two before doing ANY promotion for exactly the reasons that WW pointed out. Get open, figure out the small things and when you feel things are smooth, start waving the flag.
thanks for the info. another question what did you base you inventory on for thr first week? do i use projections what we think were going to do or figure in less in beginning ? thanks again
I say prepare to be so busy it will rock your world.
make sure you have plenty of flour,cheese,and sauce,i mean PLENTY…
you should set up an emergency plan with your vendor to get anything you might have missed or run out of.
do not forget to have plenty of change for the registers.
I DO NOT WISH THAT FIRST MONTH ON MY WORST ENEMY IT CAN BE HELL
i have seen a soft opening turn into a war zone
A couple of days before you plan to open have a big party and invite all your friends and family. Have them come all at once and let them order off the menu. Call it a dress rehearsal, and treat them like customers. You will be surprised at the small things you have forgotten. For my second store I forgot to get dough cutters. Imagine my surprise when we went to get that first pot of dough out. As far as ordering, get more than you need. Actually, get more than you THINK you need. The dress rehearsal will help because you will see what you actually use, like how that big tub of “whatever” only lasted 10 pizzas, etc. The suggestions of the soft opening were spot on.
Just to help out with some numbers, for an expected $1000 day I prep or make sure I have: 125 lbs dough, roughly 30 quarts sauce, about 75 pounds cheese, 40 lbs sausage, box of pepperoni, 4 #10 cans mushrooms, 2 #10 cans peppers, about 10 onions, about 5 pounds bacon, about 6 quarts each of broccoli and clams, about 5 sliced tomatoes. Most of my other toppings are quick to prep, like sliced cherry peppers or sliced olives.
Keep careful track of how much of everything you prep and how much you use. Keep notes on what you tend to run out of and when. Good luck to you.
Oh yes. My “soft opening” was a nightmare. We opened really quietly on a Tuesday at about 4:00pm. Absolutely no advertising was sent out as we wanted time to work out the kinks.
By Friday, the word was out that there was a new place in town. SLAMMED. It was absolute chaos and I ended up giving about 20% of my sales away for free. We ran out of all kinds of product and I couldn’t get anything until the next morning. Service was awful and the wait was over an hour. Pizzas were made incorrectly, burned and dropped.
I definitely suggest what bodegahwy said… have a nice quiet open. But, be prepared for the worst. If I would have spent a little more time training and ordered enough product it wouldn’t have been as bad. I was doing my best to avoid waste when I ordered and that was a big mistake.
The best part is that I just looked at the sales from that nightmare first Friday. It would be a slow Monday now 
just want to say thank you for the input so far. i plan to do a soft opening. the problem or good thing my customers and suppliers from my current business of 21 yrs, and all the people i fed for experience about 700
- over 2 years have been waiting a long time for me to open so i will take everyones advice and order more than i need