About Before It Opens

Before It Opens is an independent planning guide to how hotel and restaurant spaces get made. It covers opening timelines, fit-out budgets, procurement, punch lists, soft openings, and the machinery between a signed lease and a first paying guest.

We write for a specific reader: the first-time owner or operator who is mid-project right now, standing in a half-finished dining room, trying to work out whether what is happening to their schedule and their bank account is normal. (Usually: yes. Usefully: it is also manageable, and the managing is learnable.)

What we publish

Explainers on the phases and mechanics of a build-out. Budget frameworks presented as thinking tools rather than fake benchmarks. Field guides for the weeks that decide projects — punch list, soft opening. And pattern pieces that distill how openings go wrong, written as recurring shapes rather than gossip.

Our fact rules

This is a small publication and its only asset is being trustworthy, so the rules are strict and public:

• No invented statistics. Where we offer proportions or ranges, they are labeled as planning heuristics, not measurements.
• Material factual claims should be traceable. We favor primary sources such as government agencies, accessibility standards, code bodies, and established industry associations. When rules vary by contract or jurisdiction, we say so.
• Everything is bylined "Before It Opens editors." No invented staff writers, no fake experts.

The name, in case it is not obvious, is the doorway and the launch at once. Both kinds of opening are what this guide is about.