Breakfast shop manager - the pre-opening checklist: an arrival-to-open timeline where every item carries a pass standard and a degraded-mode fallback for when it fails

Generate a breakfast shop pre-opening checklist I can run from arrival
to open. Organized as a timeline, every item tickable yes or no, every
item with a pass standard and a fallback for when it fails.

My store: made-fresh buns + soy milk + tea eggs + congee; scan-to-pay
registers; doors effectively open at 6:30 for the rush. Staff arrive
[N] hours before open.

Checklist structure (three timeline blocks):

Block 1 - Arrival (open minus N to N-1 hours):
- Power-on order: steamer first (longest preheat) -> soy milk machine
  -> warming table -> griddle. Pass standard: the steamer is venting
  steam, not "the light is on"
- Soaked beans out of the cooler to temper, into the machine
- Thawed filling check: filling moved to the fridge last night should
  be soft now; if not, act immediately (warm-water bag bath) - never
  discover rock-hard filling mid-rush
- Water temperature for the dough checked against the seasonal chart

Block 2 - Prep (open minus 60 to 15 minutes):
- First tray out: must clear the steamer [X] minutes before open.
  Pass standard: lift the lid, press a bun - it springs back, no dent
- First batch of soy milk done, one test cup poured: too thick or too
  thin gets fixed now, not carried into the rush
- Tea eggs topped up, congee into the warming drum - drum wall hot to
  the touch is the pass standard
- Packaging staged: three bag sizes, cups, paper liners per yesterday's
  rush - standard: one peak hour's worth from yesterday placed at the
  packing station, not "half a sleeve left, probably fine"
- Float counted into denomination slots, matching yesterday's amount
- Menu board check: every repriced or re-bundled item verified one
  by one

Block 3 - Final 15 minutes:
- One live scan payment test (pay one cent from your own phone, then
  refund it)
- Delivery printer test ticket: prints, legible
- Station assignments: register 1, steamer-and-packing 1, floater 1 -
  said out loud, who stands where for the rush
- Cloths, tongs, gloves in place; raw and cooked tongs color-separated,
  never shared

Format per item: time window / what / pass standard (decidable) /
fallback if failed (a concrete way to open anyway). Fallbacks follow
one principle: a problem never blocks opening - what it blocks is
opening with an empty counter. Examples:
- First tray late -> hang the "available from 7:00" sign, open with
  soy milk, eggs, and congee now
- Payment chime silent -> mount the "please show your payment screen"
  sign at open, fix after the rush
- Packaging short -> emergency buy from the nearest convenience store,
  cap large takeaway orders meanwhile

Constraints:
- No "check that equipment is working" or "confirm stock is sufficient"
  - items without a standard are not allowed; everything must be
  tickable yes or no
- No "resolve issues promptly" - fallbacks must be specific enough to
  execute as written
- The whole list prints on no more than two A4 pages, laminated for
  the kitchen wall against grease

Why it is written this way

Nearly every mid-rush incident has a shadow in the pre-open hour: the missed first tray traces to dough started late, the change chaos to an unsplit float, the dead queue to a payment chime discovered mute at 7:00. Moving these onto a timeline with pass standards relocates incidents from "firefighting mid-rush" to "handling before open" - same problems, an order of magnitude cheaper to handle. The three blocks follow the real arrival rhythm rather than importance ranking, because an importance-sorted checklist tells nobody what to do at which hour.

Pass standards are what separate this from a generic checklist. "Check the steamer" can't be ticked; "venting steam counts as on" can. "Packaging staged" can't be judged; "one peak hour from yesterday, placed at the packing station" can. Every standard is deliberately chosen to need no tools and no experience - poke-rebound, drum hot to the touch, a one-cent live payment - so a kitchen helper and the manager grade with the same ruler and can't each assume the other checked.

The fallback lines are the most easily omitted and least optional part of the design. A normal checklist assumes every item passes, so the first failure leaves two bad options: open broken or don't open. With fallbacks written in, every single failure has a path to opening anyway - first tray late becomes "sign up, open at 6:30 with what's ready," silent chime becomes "screen-check mode" - the incident downgrades from "today is ruined" to "today runs Plan B." One sentence carries the principle: a problem never blocks opening; what it blocks is opening an empty counter.

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