The one thing you really need when you do a grand opening is to have a slick setup, the last thing is to make people wait, poor product, wrong product, long delivery times etc etc. Everything needs to be running smoothly, all the problems and glitches solved, all the crew experienced enough to deal with the volume. Unfortunately for most people opening their first store they gonna have any of that list not for quite a while.
I didn’t have a grand opening when I opened shop one. We didn’t do a grand opening, we didn’t send any menu’s out, the only thing I did was a bit of work with the local paper about us recruiting, a poster in the window, then the paper came and took some pictures when we did some slapping at the interviews, drove around in my logo’d car, sign outside with the opening date - that was all. We got absolutely hammered the first 4 weeks (marketing started around week 3), it wasn’t nice, it wasn’t clever and other than having more, and more experienced staff I could do nothing else to put it right, people just kept on coming. I hate to think what it would have been like if I’d planned a grand opening. I’d have either wasted money p*ssing more people off with slow service or wasted money when I cancelled it.
So my advice to anyone opening their first store is…
- Don’t plan on having a grand opening in the first few weeks.
- sure do some local marketing to get people involved with the opening i.e. in the local paper or even the radio
- wait till you’re 99% happy you can cope with a good kicking then have a marketing event, it may be a grand opening or something else (theres a million reasons) but don’t do it when you open week 1.
And with regards to 'its different for a delco than a restaurants, nope not sure I agree with that one. The only difference is people stay and eat at a restaurant, all the other mechanics and things you need to do are 99% the same.