--- title: "Donut Shop Opening Checklist" canonical: "https://peakscaleops.com/checklists/donut-shop-opening-checklist/" --- > Source: https://peakscaleops.com/checklists/donut-shop-opening-checklist/ [Checklists](/checklists/) / [Donut Shop](/checklists/donuts/) / Opening - Fryer On, Case Full # Donut Shop Opening Checklist A donut shop opens well when three things happen before the doors do: **the fry oil gets tested, the filled lines get pulled, and the case is full before the mid-morning peak**. This 9-check opening list covers all three plus the bake plan for each time of day, and every check is backed by published inspection or frying data - not opinion. [Run this checklist - free](/run/donuts/?list=opening) [Download PDF](/checklists/pdf/peakscale-donuts-checklists.pdf)[Download Excel](/checklists/excel/peakscale-donuts-checklists.xlsx) The checklist ยท 13 checks ### Protect your profit before you open the doors **1\. Test the fryer oil before the first batch, not after** A morning reading is the cheapest one you can take. A full day of frying on bad oil ruins every single unit and can put you over your country's legal limit. **2\. Work through the pull list first - cream, custard and filled items before anything else** Filled items have the shortest shelf life and the highest risk. Clear them out before a customer or inspector finds them. **3\. Put yesterday's plain items at the front with a price-cut sticker** Sell them during the morning rush, when the most customers are in the shop, instead of throwing them away at closing for nothing. ### Set the case up to sell **4\. Fill the case to your target before the mid-morning rush** Most breakfast customers come in during a short mid-morning window. A half-empty case at that time loses sales on food you already paid to make. **5\. Put your best sellers and highest-profit items at eye level, closest to the register** The busiest trade happens in a short window, so the first row a customer sees must earn the most profit. No published study measures donut case placement, so test this against your own hourly sell-through. **6\. Set up the glaze and topping station clean: fresh glaze, a wiped pour edge, and sanitised tongs in a holder** Keeping surfaces and tools clean at this station is the most common failure in New York City donut-shop inspections. It is also the first thing an inspector checks anywhere. ### Bake to match how much sells through the day **7\. Check that today's bake plan matches how much sells on this day of the week, not a fixed daily number** Sales change a lot by day of the week. A plan copied from a quiet day leaves you out of stock on a busy day, and wastes food on a slow one. **8\. Split today's baking into timed batches, with the first one ready before the rush** Baking in batches to match sales keeps fresh food ready at every time of day, instead of letting the whole day's food get old from 7 a.m. **9\. Check yesterday's log of unsold items and sell-outs before you set today's amounts** Yesterday's numbers are the only real forecast you have. Make more of what sold out, and less of what didn't sell, every morning. ### Hygiene & Safety **10\. Wash your hands and put on clean gloves before you touch food.** Dirty hands and gloves put germs on the food you sell. **11\. Check every staff member for signs of illness before the shift starts.** A sick worker can pass illness to customers through the food. **12\. Mix sanitizer to the correct strength (ppm) before you open.** Weak sanitizer will not kill germs on your surfaces. **13\. Set up separate tools and space for allergen-friendly items before you open.** This stops other allergens from touching safe items (cross-contact). ## Frequently asked questions **What should a donut shop do first thing in the morning?** Test the fryer oil before the first batch, not after it. In field sampling of 100 reused frying-oil samples from working food outlets in Thailand, 42 were already at or above the 25% total-polar-compounds legal limit while still in use - and colour and smell do not detect that. Then action the pull list on cream and custard-filled lines, and stage yesterday's plain carry-over at the front with a price-cut (markdown) sticker so it clears into the morning rush. **When should the display case be full in a donut shop?** Before the mid-morning peak. Across 20 US cities of point-of-sale data, most cities' breakfast trade was busiest between 9 and 11 a.m.; in Richmond 55% of full-service breakfast transactions landed between 10 and 11 a.m. alone. Filling to target at 9:30 rather than 8:00 means the case is fullest when it earns most. That data comes from point-of-sale vendors, so use it as a rough pattern of when people buy, then measure your own hourly sell-through. **How do I set how many donuts to make each day?** From yesterday's unsold and sell-out log, adjusted for the day of the week. Forecast-led production instead of a fixed daily number was reported to cut bakery returns by an average 30% across customers of one machine-learning forecasting service in 2022 - a number the vendor itself published, so read it as a rough guide rather than a promise - and weekday demand is not flat - quick-service restaurant (QSR) transactions peaked Wednesday to Saturday, with Friday alone carrying 17% of the week. Raise quantities on lines that sold out, cut them on lines that went unsold, every single morning. ## More Donut Shop checklists [Fry Oil Quality and Change Schedule](/checklists/donut-fryer-oil-change-checklist/)[Glaze, Icing and Topping Station](/checklists/donut-glaze-topping-station-checklist/)[Display Turnover and Restocking by Time of Day](/checklists/donut-display-case-restock-checklist/)[Cream and Custard-Filled Product Control](/checklists/cream-filled-donut-handling-checklist/)[Closing - Unsold, Waste and Tomorrow's Bake](/checklists/donut-shop-closing-checklist/)[Weekly Checks](/checklists/donut-shop-weekly-checklist/) One free app has all of them: [open the Donut Shop Checklists app](/run/donuts/) - offline, no account, add it to your home screen. ## Sources Every statistic on this page comes from public inspection and food-safety data: - [Modified Test Kit for Detecting Polar Compounds in Reused Frying Oil, Foods](https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/14/9/1572) - [FSAI, Survey of the microbiological safety of ready-to-eat cakes, pastries and desserts](https://www.fsai.ie/getmedia/fa18aa77-da0b-41b0-9003-78226f4f28fa/7937-ready-to-eat-cakes-accessible-\(1\).pdf?ext=.pdf) - [NYC DOHMH Restaurant Inspection Results, dataset 43nn-pn8j](https://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/43nn-pn8j.json) - [Dynamic Pricing and Organic Waste Bans, Marketing Science](https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mksc.2020.0214) - [Bread and Bakery Sector Action Plan, Love Food Hate Waste NSW](https://www.lovefoodhatewaste.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-02/Bread-and-Bakery-Sector-Action-Plan_Full-Report-1.pdf) - [Polar compounds: a quantitative indicator for life cycle assessment during protracted semi-continuous deep fat frying, IJFST 56(8):3903](https://academic.oup.com/ijfst/article/56/8/3903/7806157) - [Toast Restaurant Trends Report, Q1 2024](https://pos.toasttab.com/news/most-popular-coffee-and-tea-drinks-toast-restaurant-trends-report) - [Machine-learning-based demand forecasting against food waste, J. Industrial Ecology 28(5)](https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/inecol/v28y2024i5p1117-1131.html) - [Microbial Contamination of Cream Filled Pastries Supplied in Confectioneries of Zanjan, Iran](https://jnfh.mums.ac.ir/article_11732.html) - [Filtrox, Frying Oil Quality Legislation](https://www.filtrox.com/blog/2023/10/16/frying-oil-quality-legislation/) - [FDA, Outbreak Investigation of Salmonella: Mini Pastries](https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/outbreak-investigation-salmonella-mini-pastries-january-2025) - [FDA, Survey Data on Acrylamide in Food: Total Diet Study Results](https://www.fda.gov/food/process-contaminants-food/survey-data-acrylamide-food-total-diet-study-results) - [Commission Regulation](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32017R2158) - [wheresmyshrink.com, Sales and Shrink by Department](http://wheresmyshrink.com/shrinkbydepartment.html)