Restaurant Guide

Published: 2026-10-30 · Reviewed: 2026-11-04

Restaurant Opening Checklist: The Complete Document Guide

Why this matters

Most restaurants don’t fail in year one because the food is bad. They fail because the paperwork is a mess, a permit that lapsed, a supplier who never agreed to your payment terms, a hire who started with no contract. Inspectors, landlords, staff, and suppliers all judge you on paper before they judge your food. Get the documents right before you open and you’ll spend opening month cooking, not scrambling.

Practical steps

1. Build your licences and permits folder first

Before anything else, make a single folder, physical or digital, that holds every licence, permit, and certificate your restaurant needs. This varies by location, so check with your local authority rather than trusting a generic checklist, but most restaurants need to sort out:

  • A food business registration or licence (in many places this must be done before you serve a single customer).
  • A premises permit covering the restaurant itself, health, fire, and building approvals.
  • An alcohol licence if you’ll serve drinks, these can take weeks or months, so apply early.
  • Staff food-handling certificates or training records, depending on local rules.

Put copies where staff can find them. Inspectors ask to see licences before they look at your kitchen. If the paperwork is behind the till in one labelled folder, the first impression is competence. If you have to rummage, it’s not.

2. Set up supplier documents properly

Walk-in suppliers with a handshake deal are how small restaurants bleed money. Before opening, document each supplier relationship:

  • Write down agreed prices, delivery days, minimum order quantities, and payment terms for every supplier, your produce, meat, dairy, dry goods, beverages, and cleaning supplies suppliers at minimum.
  • Keep a supplier order form template ready so every order is written down with quantities, prices, and a delivery confirmation signature. Verbal orders over the phone at 6am are where wrong deliveries start.
  • Track delivery quality from day one. Note short deliveries, poor-quality produce, and late arrivals in a running log. You’ll need this evidence when you renegotiate prices or switch suppliers, not your memory of a bad tomato delivery three months ago.

3. Assemble a staff hiring pack

Every hire gets the same pack, no exceptions. Hiring “your mate’s nephew” without paperwork is exactly how wage disputes and tax problems start:

  • A simple employment agreement covering role, pay rate, pay schedule, hours, notice period, and any probation terms.
  • An emergency contact form and basic ID verification records.
  • A short induction checklist: fire exits, food safety basics, your hygiene rules, who to call when something breaks, and where the first-aid kit lives. Walk them through it on day one and have them sign it.
  • A rota template ready to go, so shifts are published in advance and staff can see them in writing.

Standardise the pack now, when you have time. Once you’re open and short-staffed, “we’ll sort the paperwork later” becomes permanent.

4. Run opening-week checklists

Opening week is chaos. Checklists are what stop the chaos from becoming chaos-with-consequences:

  • Daily opening checklist: equipment temperatures, gas/water checks, cleaning verification, till float, reservation book review.
  • Daily closing checklist: food storage and labelling, deep-clean tasks assigned by name, cash-up, waste bin areas, security (alarms, locks).
  • A deep-clean schedule that goes beyond daily wiping, ovens, extraction hoods, walk-in fridges, grease traps, with names and dates attached. Cleaning nobody is assigned to doesn’t happen.
  • Incident and complaint capture from day one. Something will go wrong in week one. Having the incident report template on the clipboard means staff actually record it instead of telling you in passing and forgetting.

Common mistakes

  1. Applying for permits last. Alcohol licences and some health approvals take longer than your fit-out. If your opening date depends on a permit that hasn’t been issued, you don’t have an opening date. Check requirements the day you sign the lease.
  2. One supplier for everything. It’s convenient, and it means one price rise hits every dish on your menu. Open with at least two suppliers in your main categories so you can compare prices and switch when quality drops.
  3. Hiring without a written agreement. The friend of a friend who helps out for cash in week one becomes the tribunal case in month six. A one-page agreement takes five minutes and protects both sides.
  4. Cleaning schedules with no names. “Kitchen deep-clean, weekly” assigned to nobody gets done by nobody. Every cleaning task needs a name, a date, and a signature.

Templates that help

Bottom line

Your opening paperwork isn’t bureaucracy, it’s the operating system your restaurant runs on. Licences in one folder, suppliers on paper, every hire with a signed pack, and checklists for the daily grind. Do this before opening and you’ll spend your energy on the food, which is the point.