Donewell / Restaurants / Coffee shop closing checklist

Coffee shop closing checklist

A coffee shop closing checklist runs the espresso machine, the brewers, the milk fridge, the case, the front and the drawer. It has 19 items in 7 sections — espresso, brew, milk, pastry case, front, cash and close. Of those, one asks for a reading, one asks for a photo and two are notes; the rest are a tick. Espresso comes first because backflushing is the one item that decides how tomorrow tastes.

Tick it here — nothing is saved anywhere but this browser — or copy it into Donewell and have your staff sign each item off on their phone.

What should be on a coffee shop closing checklist?

Group heads backflushed with cleaner, steam wands cleaned and purged, portafilters soaking, grinder hoppers emptied and wiped, drip trays out. Then batch brewers and urns, then the milk fridge at 33–41 °F with open milks dated and pitchers washed, then the case, the condiment bar, the tables, the floor, the restroom and the trash. Drawer counted and dropped, back door, front door, lights.

How long does closing a café take?

Thirty to forty minutes for one closer once the espresso machine is free, which in practice means it starts after the last drink rather than at the posted closing time. The chemical backflush is the item with a real minimum — three cycles with cleaner and three without, several minutes of standing there — and it is the first item cut when somebody is trying to leave.

What happens if the group heads are not backflushed?

Rancid coffee oils stay in the group and the shots pull bitter within a couple of days, which reads to a customer as a bad café rather than a skipped step. Nobody tastes it on night one, which is precisely why it belongs on a checklist that somebody signs. The day-olds note beside the case does the same job for waste: bagged or logged, never simply gone.

Last updated 17 September 2026