Restaurant opening and closing checklist: the 45 minutes before service and the 30 after

Before anything is switched on, one person walks the room and looks at what a guest or an inspector would see first. The licence, the display board, the fridges, the bins, the water. It takes ten minutes at 10am and it cannot be done at 11pm, which is the whole argument for putting it at the top of the list.

• The FSSAI licence is on the wall, readable. Regulation 2.1.4(6) of the FSS (Licensing and Registration) Regulations 2011 requires a true copy displayed at a prominent place at all times within the premises (Licensing Regulations, read 2026-09-09). Not in a drawer, not in the office.
• The Food Safety Display Board is up too. It is a separate requirement from the licence, in restaurant colours, A4 for a registered business and A3 for a licensed one, minimum one board (fssai.gov.in/business/fsdb, read 2026-09-09).
• Temperatures read where they matter. FSSAI's direction of 28 November 2022 requires temperature to be monitored with recording devices and the records kept where it is safety-critical (the direction). It does not prescribe a daily log in a set format, so anyone selling you a compulsory format is selling you something.
• Deliveries only from licensed or registered vendors, and written down. The same 2022 direction added that for restaurants specifically, and Schedule 4 asks for incoming-material checks to be kept for a year or the shelf life, whichever is longer.

One more that belongs to the shift rather than the morning: FSSAI's hygiene-rating guidance puts one FoSTaC-trained food safety supervisor per 25 food handlers (Hygiene Rating guidance, read 2026-09-09). In a fifteen-person restaurant that is one person, and it is worth knowing which one before an inspector asks.

Three small jobs decide whether the first hour is calm: change in the drawer, a printer with paper in it, and a menu that tells the truth about what the kitchen can cook today. All three take a minute before service and cost fifteen during it. None of them has a published standard behind it, so treat this section as operator judgement rather than a rule.

The float first. One agreed number, counted in, and never topped up from the day's takings without a record. On the register that is Orders, then Cash box, then Start the cash shift with the opening float in rupees. The reasoning behind the number and the count at the other end of the day is in the cash handling post, and the row it writes names whoever was signed in and the till it happened on.

Then the printer. Print one slip before the first order, so that a finished paper roll is a problem at 10:40am rather than a table waiting for food at 9pm. Print test page sits in Settings, which only an owner or a manager can open, so this line is theirs. A failed print never blocks the sale: the job queues and retries for a few minutes, then parks for a hand retry. But a queue retrying onto an empty roll leaves the kitchen with nothing to cook from. The wiring is in the kitchen printer guide.

Then the stock-outs. The fish that did not come, the paneer that went yesterday, the birthday cake somebody has reserved. Mark them before the doors open and no waiter can ring them and no guest gets promised them. In EasyKOT it is a toggle under Settings, then Menu stock & pins, another owner and manager job. The tile on the register then greys out and reads Out of stock.

A single PIN taped under the counter means every discount, void and refund that night belongs to nobody. Signing in individually is the cheapest control in a restaurant, because attribution, not the approval popup, is what changes behaviour. EasyKOT has five roles (owner, manager, cashier, captain and chef), the sign-in screen is a PIN pad with no name list on it, and the rail then shows who is on.

What the roles buy you on a normal night: a discount at the till is applied directly by an owner, manager or cashier, while a captain on a phone has to have it approved by someone who may discount. An unfired line comes off the check freely. A fired line, food the kitchen has already cooked, takes a reason picked from a list of four, plus a manager's PIN when it is a cashier doing the voiding; an owner or manager confirms their own. A refund on a settled bill is re-typed by the cashier, and then a manager or the owner enters their PIN, because the cashier's own is refused. The honest limit worth stating: who applied a discount is written to the order ledger, not shown on a screen yet.

Xenia's daily-ops writing has the rule that makes a checklist survive staff turnover: assign every line to a role, never to a name (Xenia, read 2026-09-09). Names leave in March. The opening manager does not. The roles themselves are in the staff PINs and roles guide.

A mid-service checklist that anyone actually completes has two lines on it. Hand the drawer over properly if the cashier changes, and update the stock-outs before the evening menu gets promised to anybody. Everything else can wait for the close.

The handover matters because of who owns a shortfall. Count, hand over, and let the next person start from a number they agreed to, rather than running one drawer through two people all evening. The cash handling post has the reasoning.

The second line is the stock-out list again, at the hinge between lunch and dinner. Whatever ran out at lunch is what the evening will be asked for most, and a tile switched off at 3pm saves an argument at 9pm. While you are on the till, the floor view's dwell timers are worth one glance: a table that has been sitting for two hours with an open check is either a long lunch or a bill nobody asked for.

Closing is one ordered pass, and the order is what keeps it to thirty minutes. Stop taking orders, let the kitchen finish, settle everything that can be settled, then decide what is left over, then count the cash, then lock. Counting before the leftover checks are dealt with means counting twice.

On the register the day close carries the cash box line at the top. Above the leftover checks sits "Bills issued today" per till: first and last number, issued, cancelled and net. That row is the shape GSTR-1 Table 13 asks for, and the register warns you if a number is missing from the series, so a gap found tonight is a five-minute question instead of a filing problem (the monthly GST routine). Then the checks left over from a service that has already finished. An empty check, a stray tap with nothing rung, is discarded in one press. A check with food on it that nobody settled is written off with a typed reason and a PIN, and this one prompts everybody, the owner included. A check where money was already taken is listed and cannot be voided, which is the correct answer rather than a missing feature.

The night is one night, even past midnight. The trading day starts at 4am and you can move it (dashboard Settings), so a 12:40am bill counts against last night. The day close deals with checks from a service that has finished, never with tonight's live tables.

Credit where it is due: Petpooja publishes a complete closing checklist, free and with no email asked for, split into front of house, back of house and manager, with a section written for Indian restaurants (Petpooja, 23 March 2026). Their opening list sits inside a 26-page PDF that asks for your email first (startup guide, 21 May 2026), which is the one thing this page does differently.

Both lists are below, by role. Cross out what does not apply to your shop, add the two or three things only your kitchen knows, and keep it to one sheet. A checklist that runs to two pages is a checklist that gets signed without being done.

The 45 and the 30 are Petpooja's numbers, from the checklist section of its startup guide. Nobody has published an Indian survey behind them, so treat them as a starting point: time your own once and write the answer at the top of the sheet.

Opening, 45 minutes before service

• Manager: FSSAI licence and Food Safety Display Board on the wall and readable.
• Manager: fridge and freezer temperatures read and recorded where food safety depends on them.
• Manager: deliveries checked against the bill, vendor licensed or registered, the check written down.
• Cashier: float counted into the drawer, the same agreed number as yesterday.
• Manager: test slip printed, paper roll good for the whole shift, spare roll under the counter.
• Manager: today's stock-outs marked, so those tiles read Out of stock before anyone can ring them.
• Everyone: signed in on their own PIN before the first order goes through.
• Kitchen: prep against yesterday's top sellers, gas and water on, first batch started.
• Floor: tables, cutlery, menus and the washroom, in one walk by one person.

Closing, 30 minutes after the last cover

• Floor: last order called, last KOT fired, nothing new rung after that.
• Cashier: every table that can be settled is settled; anything left goes to the day close.
• Manager: day close run. Empty checks discarded, unsettled ones written off with a reason and a PIN.
• Manager: bills issued today read from first number to last, and a gap warning answered tonight rather than noted.
• Cashier: drawer counted blind, then Expected, Counted and Variance, with a reason written against any gap.
• Manager: takings out of the drawer to wherever they sleep, tomorrow's float left behind.
• Kitchen: fridges shut and loaded, gas off, bins out, spoilage written down.
• Manager: last walk, lights, shutters, locks, alarm.

Four of those lines are the ones a till can carry for you: the float, the stock-outs, the sign-in and the day close. They are also the four people forget on paper, because forgetting them leaves no trace until the money is short or a sold-out dish is ordered. The rest is a pen and a person who walks the room. If you want the till half of it, EasyKOT is ₹299 a month or ₹2,990 a year, plus 18% GST as its own line, with three months free and no card. Tomorrow morning, though, print the list and put somebody's name against the opening role.