Hotpot restaurant franchisee - 60-days-to-opening prep SOP: until the exhaust work starts, nothing else on the schedule is real

You are a store build-out consultant for a chain brand. Turn the
60-day pre-opening prep for a hotpot franchise into an archivable
SOP: five gates, each containing the work / acceptance standard /
delay rule.

D-60 (groundwork gate)
- Work: exhaust and electrical retrofit design frozen, property
  filing submitted, contractor mobilized; permit application
  pre-review (anchored on the back-of-house plan)
- Acceptance: property approval in hand, construction schedule on
  paper; permit document checklist ticked item by item
- Delay rule: every day lost here pushes everything downstream.
  Exhaust is the one engineering item a hotpot store cannot route
  around - re-baseline the whole plan from the actual construction
  start; do not claw time back by compressing later gates

D-45 (build-out and hiring gate, parallel)
- Work: construction per the pre-reviewed drawings (back-of-house
  layout, open prep line, pot-wash zone, sauce-bar placement -
  now frozen); manager in seat, hiring launched; first equipment
  order placed
- Acceptance: photo record of concealed works (electrical,
  plumbing, exhaust ducting); manager signs the final drawing set
- Delay rule: drawing changes are frozen from here - any layout
  change risks re-triggering the permit inspection, and none will
  be approved

D-30 (equipment and training gate)
- Work: equipment delivered, installed, commissioned (ranges,
  pots, refrigeration, dishwashing); broth-assembly and floor
  service training begin; menu and pricing finalized to print
- Acceptance: full equipment powered through one test cycle;
  trainee broth output checked against the reference sample
- Delay rule: training delays do not compress course hours -
  staff who aren't ready turn the soft-opening data into noise

D-10 (soft-opening gate, 3 days)
- Work: capacity-limited soft open ([soft-open capacity policy:
  friends and targeted invitations]); daily debrief on three hard
  metrics: base-to-table time, peak-hour order handling, closing
  completion time
- Acceptance: the three days' measured closing times converge;
  broth taste matches the reference sample without drift
- Delay rule: if any hard metric fails to converge over three
  days, postpone opening - the soft opening is the last cheap
  place to fail; past it, every mistake is paid for by real
  guests

D-0 (opening gate)
- Work: formal opening; the first week's daily stand-up tracks
  only the soft-opening carryover items
- Acceptance: carryover items closed, one by one, on the record

Global rules:
- Each gate produces one archived document (approval / signed
  drawings / training records / soft-open data); an incomplete
  archive means the gate is not done
- No public opening-date announcement at any point before the
  permit is in hand
- This SOP contains no marketing plan or launch-event design -
  that is a separate document

Constraints:
- The five-gate frame is fixed; the day markers assume a 60-day
  baseline and stretch with the actual exhaust construction lead
  time, under one rule only: stretch, never compress
- No citation of specific regulations or approval timelines -
  jurisdictions differ; the current permitting window's own
  requirements govern

Why it is written this way

The skeleton of this SOP is dependency, not task list. An ordinary restaurant prep chart is a parallel to-do list; a hotpot store's prep is a chain: exhaust determines the construction start, construction determines build-out, back-of-house layout determines the permit inspection, the permit determines soft opening, soft opening determines opening - each link locked into the next. Drawing the chain out is what turns "if exhaust slips, everything slips" from a slogan into discipline: the only honest response to a delay anywhere on the chain is to move the whole thing, and time clawed back by compressing later gates gets repaid, with interest, in the soft-opening data.

The drawing freeze comes from a real pit: two weeks before opening, moving the sauce bar "just a bit" looks like furniture work but actually changes the back-of-house layout - and the permit inspection can restart from zero. Every "small change" during build-out is a bet against the inspection standard; this SOP removes the table.

Soft-open acceptance watches "convergence," not "hitting targets," and that is the most misread line in the document. Three days of numbers all trending better means the process is self-correcting and will keep converging after opening; three days of good-looking but volatile numbers means the good look was luck, and the first slammed night exposes it. Convergence is a process metric, achievement is a point-in-time metric - prep should trust the former.

"No opening date announced before the permit arrives" is a global rule because of marketing momentum: once a date goes out, the flyers, invitations, and local accounts all pile in behind it, and any permit or construction slip becomes a public postponement. An announced date is the one thing on this chain that can be neither compressed nor moved.

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