Q: What's up with a restaurant having a "soft" opening? Is this something to be embraced or avoided? -- Michael B., St. Louis
A: It was about two years ago when I caught myself telling an exhausted restaurant owner on opening day: “You realize you’re one Tweet away from a full house.” His face went pale with the realization.
In the good ol’ days, restaurants could count on slow-to-spread word of mouth (and to a lesser extent) print media to flick on the "Open" sign, so a restaurant could take a few shifts, a few days, or even a week to practice, to adjust, to open “softly.” For the record, a soft opening is one that occurs with no advance warning, where guests pay for their meals, sometimes at full price, sometimes not (discounts are often offered in exchange for constructive criticism).
No restaurant opens smoothly. No matter how experienced the staff or how many times the restaurant has been repeated, the employees must get comfortable and management be given the opportunity to straighten a tangle before it becomes an ugly knot. All owners want is to get the machine running smoothly before the judgmental throngs arrive.
Good luck with that today.
With the surging popularity of Facebook and Twitter--and throw texting in there as well--news of a restaurant opening is disseminated instantaneously, practically the minute the doors are opened. There will be no warming up and no margin for error. Word-of-mouth has been replaced by the world wide whammy of the smart phone--and every diner has one. For the restaurateur, the phenomenon is more unsettling than this year's cicada invasion…because it won’t die off.
Yet a new restaurant needs to practice. What's today’s restaurant owner to do?
Many restaurants have flat given up to the extent that some are publicizing their "soft" opening, which makes it not so soft at all. When you state in print that you're open, you're open, so kindly alert the social media spin doctors.
There are other tactics a restaurant owner can use to try to beat the Twitter time clock. And those, dear friends, will be published in a follow-up article in Relish, St. Louis Magazine's food, wine, and spirits blog.
