The opening and closing checklist, and how to make it stick

Why the printed one on the wall stops working

A laminated checklist by the till gets read carefully for about two weeks. After that it becomes furniture — people know the routine, so they stop looking, and the two items that only matter occasionally are the two that get missed.

The failure is not laziness. It is that a wall chart cannot tell you whether it was done, so nobody is ever asked. A list that records itself changes the question from "did you close properly?" to "the fridge temps line is blank, what happened?"

What belongs on an opening list

Opening is about readiness and evidence: the things that must be true before a customer walks in, and the things you would want a record of if anyone ever asked.

• Fridge and freezer temperatures, written down as numbers, not ticked. A tick proves nothing later; a number does.
• Anything that has to come up to temperature or come out to defrost, first, because everything else can happen while it does.
• Float counted and signed for by a named person.
• Coffee machine on and purged, grinder dialled in — the first three shots go in the bin and everyone knows it, so put it on the list rather than relying on it.
• Specials board written, which is the item most often remembered at 11:55.
• Toilets checked. Nobody wants it on a list. It is on every good list.

What belongs on a closing list

Closing is about safety and about tomorrow morning. The test for an item is simple: if this is missed, does someone find out at 6am, or in three weeks when something has gone off?

• Gas off, and any equipment that must be off before the last person leaves.
• Fridge and freezer doors seated. A door left ajar overnight is a full stock write-off found at opening.
• Hot food either used, labelled and dated, or thrown. Labelled and dated is the part that gets skipped.
• Cash counted, banked or in the safe, and the count recorded by name.
• Anything low written down for the morning order, while it is fresh — not remembered.
• Alarm set and doors checked, last, as its own item.

Order the list the way a person walks

This is the difference between a list that gets finished and one that gets abandoned halfway. Write the items in the order somebody physically moves through the room, not grouped by category.

A list that sends someone from the cellar to the front counter and back to the cellar gets shortcut on a busy night, and once it has been shortcut once it stops being trusted. Walk the route yourself and write down what you pass, in the order you pass it.

Keeping it honest

Two rules do most of the work. Put a name against the run, so the record says who closed rather than that somebody did. And review it after anything goes wrong — a missed item is either a training problem or a list problem, and the list is the cheaper of the two to fix.

Keep it short enough to actually finish. A forty-item closing list at midnight is a list of forty things nobody will read, which is worse than the twelve that matter.