Not yet ready for business
Malls, restaurants and casinos also adopt this dry-run approach, and call it a “soft opening.” This twilight zone of accepting paying patrons, while lowering service expectations (“We are not yet really open”), is a good way to start generating revenues.
Signages for projects under construction invite market interest, even for a vacant lot. The fences around the development serve as billboards for the work in progress, showing how the completed building will look like and the happy customers that will enjoy it. Before the full completion is a “soft opening” to allow sampling of the amenities for a facility not yet fully ready for business.
Concerts and theatrical presentations have dress or technical rehearsals, the first with complete costumes, the second already with lights, sets and sound systems. These soft performances are not intended for a paying audience, meant only to allow the actors to be comfortable with their lines and master their blockings.
Malls, restaurants and casinos also adopt this dry-run approach, and call it a “soft opening.” This twilight zone of accepting paying patrons, while lowering service expectations (“We are not yet really open”), is a good way to start generating revenues. Why wait when you’re completely ready to serve customers?
In a trial period, products are offered at a discount or tested for acceptance with a promotion. A doughnut chain in its soft opening can offer a lifetime supply of its popular product for early birds and cause long lines of patrons waiting overnight for the privilege.
Property companies have long practiced the soft opening approach. Printing colorful brochures featuring an artist’s sketch of the development and sample floor layouts, they use aggressive sales teams to “pre-sell” a hole in the ground.
A soft opening is a kind of probationary period. This HR practice allows the company to evaluate how well a new employee fits into the corporate culture, and what level of skills he is able to reach. At the end of this trial phase involving a lower salary, there is the option to regularize the employment status or just let it run out. Companies have been known to extend probations indefinitely, with different sets of employees.
Sometimes, a soft opening is meant to comply with an announced start of operations. If a mall project is to be delivered on a certain day, who’s to say it is not yet ready for business if it announces a soft opening? So what if there are still minor bugs to fix, like a non-functioning air-conditioner, unavailable parking spaces being used for construction supplies, and only a few stores ready for the public?
A soft opening is expected to be followed by a real opening. The kinks are slowly straightened out, and even if this takes a year of inconvenience, the mall stumbles along until everything works. The soft opening signs are quietly removed after a month, and instead of an actual inauguration featuring distinguished guests cutting the ribbons, the facility opts to celebrate instead its first anniversary, one year from the soft opening date.
Homeowners understand this impatience to move into a new house awaited with such anticipation. They move in even when the place is not yet quite ready, willing to suffer through the smell of paint and the noisy sanding of the mahogany floor. This soft occupancy is seen to speed up the work pace of the delayed contractor.
Just as openings can be soft, closings too can be equally squishy.
How does a place close softly? It continues to serve a few tables. Menus have many items unavailable. (“Sir, we don’t have sea urchins today.”) Familiar waitresses disappear. And one fine day, all that’s left is a padlocked door with the name of the restaurant already taken out. Not too long after, a new establishment with new decor and theme takes over and quietly announces its own soft opening.
Relationships before formal vows are taken, and contracts signed can also have soft openings, although the use of such a phrase may be misconstrued. Still, there are periods of testing, including overnight stays, foreign trips taken together, even a brief live-in arrangement as prelude to a more permanent partnership. Like restaurants and corporate mergers, such relationships may not open at all. They can then go straight to soft endings… with lingering feelings and maybe even noisy exits.