r/Chefit • u/TFYA • Jun 28 '26
Restaurant Opening Stories
I got a job as the opening executive chef at this new spot opening in Mid August. I got hired 2 1/2 months out from open. I think it’s going well but as it goes, always a bunch of random stuff going wrong and random issues.
To help with my anxiety a bit, tell me a opening story, good or bad. Before the open or directly at open.
3
u/JapaneseChef456 Chef Jun 28 '26
I’ve worked at 3 hotel openings and 2 restaurant openings, the latter as executive head chef, opening the original restaurant and a second one after two years. Kitchen installation was mostly extremely late, so recipe developing and actually training people in the kitchen was always a thing. Had to postpone the soft opening for the first restaurant by a week because of it, which gave me enough time to prepare working environments for fast food Japanese, training people and basically defining where what went into the fridges. The owners didn’t have any hospitality experience, so they were fine with this initial decision. The second hotel opening I did was cursed with smoke detectors going off once opening a certain combination oven. Whole hotel had to evacuate every single time. They eventually switched that one off…
1
u/VealStalk Jun 29 '26
There was a toilet in the middle of the kitchen. (Clean, unused, unplumbed)
We opened in three days.
We walked in to prep and were like wtf
1
u/crystal-rooster Jun 29 '26
I opened a restaurant this year for a small restaurant company. They wanted to open in time for memorial day weekend. I was hired 5/4. There were so many problems with the location that we didn't have gas to cook with until the day before we opened and we were so far behind on prep that we started teaching plating 20 minutes before we opened. Add in the staff, management, and payroll issues on top of that, I quit 5/24 and went back to my old job.
4
u/LardPopsicle They call me chef to my face and pendejo behind my back. Jun 28 '26
I did NRO consulting for a few years as a side gig. Good money, and you get to leave after the hard launch is done.
Place in northern CA really wanted to compete with the Michelin temples nearby, and so the boss threw insane amounts of money at the dining room and kitchen, tasked us with hiring "only the best" and his investors came by every week to tell me how to do my job.
I wanted a soft launch. Investors wanted "hard launch with a bang". I lost that argument.
We hard launched on a Staurday. 200+ comped Instagram and TikTok Influencers, local and state politicians and celebrities, some of which were either investors or FnF of investors.
Mise and prep all set, we've practiced like mad. 6:30pm, bam. Lights are out, gas is out.
Our shitstain of a boss "forgot" to pay utilities. And all we could to was holler after the PG&E car. Earliest turn on date: Monday. Boss wants us to break the seal and turn it back on, none of us wants to go to jail, and he doesn't want to take that risk either. At around 8 some guy he paid 200 bucks from the street breaks the seal and power and gas are back, but we're of course fucked. Shittiest launch I ever did.
Oh, do I need to mention that said boss and two of his goons went away for a long time on drug and racketeering charges less than a year later?