Donewell / Restaurants / Coffee shop opening checklist

Coffee shop opening checklist

A coffee shop opening checklist covers machine warm-up, dial-in, milk, brew, the case and the float before the door is unlocked. It has 18 items in 6 sections — arrival, espresso, milk, brew, pastry case and front. Of those, two ask for a reading, two ask for a photo and one is a note; the rest are a tick. The espresso section sits at the top because a machine needs its warm-up whether or not anyone is watching the clock.

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 opening checklist?

Alarm off and lights on, then the espresso machine on and warming, group heads flushed, portafilters clean, grinders dialled in and a shot pulled and tasted. Then milk — fridge at 33–41 °F, milks stocked and dated, wands purged — then batch brew and hot water, then the pastry case stocked, labelled and holding 33–41 °F, then the condiment bar, the float, the POS, the restroom, and the sign.

How long does opening a café take?

Forty-five minutes to an hour, and most of it is the espresso machine. A group that is genuinely up to temperature takes twenty to thirty minutes from cold, so the machine goes on before the lights are properly sorted and the dial-in happens while everything else is being stocked. An open scheduled at thirty minutes is an open where the first twenty customers get the dial-in shots.

Why taste a shot before opening?

Because grind moves overnight with the humidity and the room temperature, and a machine that was dialled in perfectly at 6 pm yesterday is not dialled in at 6 am today. "Shot pulled and tasted" is one item and one tick, and it is the only item on this list that verifies the product rather than the preparation.

Last updated 17 September 2026