New restaurants open constantly. In the U.S. alone, Yelp counted nearly 53,800 new restaurant openings in 2023, the first year openings topped pre-pandemic levels, and Canada sees a steady stream of new cafés, bars and concepts every year.
Unfortunately, many of them close almost as quickly as they open. The margin for error has never been thinner: as of November 2025, Restaurants Canada reported that 44% of Canadian restaurant operators were losing money or only breaking even, up from 12% in 2019.
Restaurants are difficult businesses to succeed in, and how you open has an outsized impact on whether you are still open in year three. After 25 years and more than 1,500 restaurants, these are the biggest opening blunders we see, and the ones we make sure our clients avoid through our Opening Handholding support.
1. Opening Without a Real Business Plan
A business plan is critical to setting you up for success. You will almost always need one for bank financing, and more often than not your landlord will want to see one before approving the lease.
But the biggest benefit is to you, the owner. Writing a proper restaurant business plan forces you to define the concept vision, what it will take to make it work, what it is really going to cost to open, and what the true return on your investment will look like. If the numbers don’t work on paper, they won’t work in real life, and it is far cheaper to find that out before you sign a lease.
2. Being Under-Financed
Be realistic about your launch costs, and make sure you have the funding to open properly. We have seen many restaurant openings that are under-financed. As opening day gets closer and the money starts running out, owners cut costs on the very things that matter most to the guest: the finishing touches on the renovation, staff training, opening inventory, launch marketing and more.
Build a realistic budget into your business plan, include a contingency for the overruns that almost every build-out has, and keep working capital in reserve for the first few months, when sales are still ramping up.
3. Overlooking the Small Guest Touches
Today’s consumer goes to a restaurant for the complete experience. If they just want to eat dinner, they can order in at home.
Many restaurants open focused only on the core basics: the food menu, the beverage menu, the tables and chairs. The smaller things matter just as much:
• What is the staff vibe, and what are they wearing?
• What music is playing, and how loud is it?
• What do the plates, glassware and cutlery look like? What about the salt and pepper shakers?
• What is on the walls?
• How is every guest greeted when they walk through the door?
• What is the unique experience you are creating that they can’t get anywhere else?
I used to work with a seasoned restaurateur who had opened many successful restaurants. Before every opening, he would create a WOW list: a list of things the restaurant would do that would make guests say “wow.” It’s a simple exercise, and one every new owner should do.
4. Taking the Wrong Launch Approach
Many restaurant owners launch by hiring their staff, running a couple of days of training and opening the doors to the public. This is the wrong approach.
For a full-service restaurant, you need a training program of at least 5 to 7 days. A quick-service restaurant can usually go a day or two shorter, and a larger operation will need a few days more.
Your pre-launch training should end with at least two days of dry runs: mock shifts that simulate real service. They start as staff-on-staff simulations, then move to friends-and-family nights or other controlled tests where the kitchen and floor team can work through real orders without the pressure of a full room of paying guests. Every problem you uncover in a dry run is one your first real guests never see.
5. Understaffing at Opening
Owners often staff a new restaurant as if it were already running at normal operating levels. You need to overstaff at opening.
The first three to six months are not about making money. They are about setting you up for success for the next ten years and more. Every guest who walks in during those first few months is a first-time guest, and every one of them is judging you and will either tell people to go or tell them not to.
No matter how much training you have done, your team is not at peak efficiency on opening day. Make sure you have enough staff on every shift to deliver an exceptional experience to all of those first-time guests. Budget your labour for the opening period separately from your steady-state model, and scale back as the team finds its rhythm and your sales patterns become clear.
6. Leaving Cost Controls Until “Things Settle Down”
Overstaffing at opening is a deliberate investment. Losing control of your costs is not. Too many new owners plan to “figure out food cost once things settle down,” and by then the bad habits are baked in: inconsistent portions, no inventory counts, and menu prices set by gut feel.
Every recipe should be costed before the menu is printed, your inventory and ordering systems should be running before the first delivery arrives, and you should be reviewing prime cost (food, beverage and labour) weekly from week one. Our methodology is built around getting restaurants to 15% profitability, and that starts before the doors open. (Already open and not hitting your numbers? See how we help existing restaurants improve profitability, or book one of our Profit Workshops.)
Open It Right, and You Set Up the Next Ten Years
A restaurant opening is one of the biggest investments most owners will ever make, and you only get one chance at it. A solid business plan, realistic financing, attention to the guest experience, proper training, the right staffing levels and tight cost controls from day one dramatically improve your odds of joining the restaurants that last.
Planning to open a restaurant? The Fifteen Group has helped launch concepts such as Smoke’s Poutinerie, Impact Kitchen and Meat and Bread. Learn more about our Opening Handholding support, or get in touch to talk about your project.
FAQ’s
-
The most common reasons we see are not having a real business plan, running short of money before opening, weak staff training, understaffing in the first months, and not controlling costs from day one.
-
For a full-service restaurant, plan on at least 5 to 7 days, finishing with two or more days of dry runs. Quick-service restaurants can often go a day or two shorter; larger operations need a few days more.
-
Yes. Your team is not yet at peak efficiency, and every guest in the first few months is a first-time guest forming an opinion. Staff above normal levels at launch and scale back as the team settles in.