Soft opening: a checklist for a new shop or branch

A soft opening is a quiet first run of a new shop or branch, with real customers but fewer of them, before the official grand opening. The doors open, the kitchen or the chairs are working, and the team serves people. But there is no tarpaulin with balloons yet, the menu may be shorter, and the hours may be limited. The point is to find what breaks while the crowd is still small.

This guide is for an owner opening a first shop and for a franchisee or brand opening a new branch: a café, a milk tea kiosk, a salon or a clinic. It covers the timeline, the staff dry run, who to invite, what to fix, and the Google profile, which should be ready before your first customer walks in.

The three words get mixed up, so define them for your team.

• Dry run: staff only, sometimes with family playing customers. No real sales. You test the equipment, the layout and who does what.
• Soft opening: real customers, real orders, real payments, but limited. By invitation, by word of mouth, or open to walk-ins with no promotion. Often a shorter menu or shorter hours.
• Grand opening: the announced first day of full operation, with the full menu or services, full hours and whatever launch activity you plan.

Long enough to see a busy hour and a quiet one, and at least one weekend. For a new branch of a brand that already has a proven system, 3 to 5 days is often enough. For a brand-new concept, or a first shop where the owner is still learning the trade, 1 to 2 weeks is safer. Leave at least a few days between the end of the soft opening and the grand opening to fix what you found.

Work backwards from the grand opening date. This is a sample for a café or a small salon; stretch it if your fit-out is running late.

• 4 weeks before: set the soft opening and grand opening dates. Create or claim the Google Business Profile and add the opening date (see below). Order signage early, because verification needs it.
• 3 weeks before: finalize the soft opening menu or service list. Write the order of service: who greets, who takes orders, who handles payment, who cleans.
• 2 weeks before: signage up. Verify the Google profile. Add photos of the storefront and interior. Train staff on the POS, the payment options and the opening and closing routines.
• 1 week before: two dry runs with staff and family, one at full speed. Send soft opening invitations.
• Soft opening days: run it, watch it, log every problem (see the log below).
• Between soft and grand opening: fix the top problems, retrain, and update the profile with your final hours, menu and photos.
• Grand opening day: full hours. Start asking every customer for a review.

A dry run is cheap and catches the obvious things: the blender that trips the breaker, the card terminal with no signal at the back counter, the bottleneck at pick-up. Do it at full speed. Have someone play a lunch rush of 15 orders in 10 minutes, and someone else play an angry customer whose order is wrong.

• Opening routine: who opens, what gets switched on, what gets checked, in what order.
• Every item on the soft opening menu or service list made or done at least twice by each person who will do it.
• Every payment method you accept tried end to end: cash, card, e-wallet QR.
• A wrong order fixed, a refund done, a complaint handled.
• Closing routine: cash count, cleaning, stock check, what gets locked.
• A timer on ticket times: from order to hand-over, for your 3 best-sellers.

Invite people who will come at the times you need to test, and who will tell you the truth. A room full of relatives clapping teaches you little. Mix in people who don't owe you anything:

• Neighbouring shops and mall tenants, who will be your lunch regulars.
• Office staff, students or residents nearby, through the building admin, the HOA or a barangay page.
• Friends and family, for the first day, when things are most likely to go wrong.
• For a franchise branch: the area manager or a franchisor representative, who knows what the system should look like.

Keep it short, say it is a soft opening, and ask for honest feedback. A Taglish version for Messenger or Viber:

"Hi [NAME]! Soft opening po namin ng [SHOP] sa [ADDRESS] on [DATES], [HOURS]. Short menu pa lang, at nag-aaral pa ang team, kaya we'd love your honest feedback. Daan po kayo! Reply lang kung anong araw kayo pupunta para ma-ready namin."

If you charge full price, say so; if there is a soft opening price, say so too (never tied to a review). Just never tie a price or a freebie to a review.

Customers will look you up on Maps on the first day, and some before. Google lets a business that hasn't opened yet create its profile and set a future opening date. Only the year and month are required, and the date can be up to a year ahead. Once the date is set and the business is verified, the profile shows on Google 90 days before the opening date.

Two more details from the same page matter for a soft opening. Until the business is officially open, customers cannot suggest edits or post reviews or photos on the profile. And after it opens, the profile shows a "Recently opened" tag for 90 days. Set the opening date to the first day you serve the public, which is usually the soft opening if walk-ins are welcome.

• Branch of a brand: ask the franchisor or head office who creates the profile and who owns it before you make one yourself. Two profiles for one branch is a duplicate. Our guide to Google Business Profile for franchises explains the usual set-up, and the basics for chains are in Google Business Profile for multiple locations.
• Name: the name on your signage, nothing added. A branch uses the brand's name exactly as the other branches do.
• Verify: for a storefront, Google's video verification asks for the business name on permanent signage, the street around it and proof you manage the place, like opening the till or the stockroom. Get the sign up first. Our video verification guide covers the details.
• Hours: soft opening hours if they differ, then your regular hours from the grand opening.
• Photos: storefront, interior, counter and best-sellers, taken in the shop.
• Review link: once the profile is verified, select Read reviews, then Get more reviews to copy the link. Google only makes the QR code on a computer browser.

It is tempting to fill the profile with friendly reviews during a soft opening. Don't. Google's policy on fake engagement rules out most of the ways people try:

• No review gating: don't ask only the guests you expect to be happy. Ask everyone or no one.
• No incentives: no free drink, discount or raffle entry for a review.
• No pressure on the premises: don't ask guests to write a review there and then, at the table or the counter.
• No asking for specific content, like mentioning a dish or naming a staff member.
• No reviews from staff, owners or their families. Google treats current and former employment and family ties as a conflict of interest.

At the soft opening, ask for feedback, not reviews. A half-page card with three questions works: what did you order, what was good, what should we fix? Read them every night.

From the grand opening, ask every customer for a Google review in the same plain way, for example with a line on the receipt or a QR at the counter: "Salamat po! Kung may oras kayo, pa-review naman po kami sa Google." The free review QR maker turns your review link into a printable code. More lines that stay within the rules are in our guide to asking customers for reviews.

The first reviews weigh heavily. In a Mapkita sample of 1,646 Metro Manila branches of 35 chain brands on Google Maps (October 2026), branches with fewer than 20 reviews had a median rating of 3.7, and 60% were below 4.0 (see the study). A handful of early complaints sets the rating a new branch carries for months.

Keep a simple log during the soft opening: date, time, what went wrong, how often, and who fixes it. At the end, sort it into three lists: fix before the grand opening, fix in the first month, and leave. A sample log for a small café:

• Ticket times over 12 minutes at lunch, 3 days in a row: add a second person at the bar from 11:30 to 1:30. Fix before the grand opening.
• Iced drinks watery by the time they reach the table: change the ice and pour order. Fix before.
• Card terminal drops signal at the back counter: move the terminal. Fix before.
• Guests can't find the shop inside the mall: ask mall admin about a directional sign, and put the floor and unit in the Google address. Fix before.
• Two pastries sold out by 2 pm every day: raise the bake. First month.
• Wi-Fi password not posted: print it on the table tent. Fix before.
• Requests for a bigger cup size: decide later.