Is your premium store a business, or a very expensive set?

01Can you describe your core customer by the life she's building, her visit frequency, and what she buys on a habit visit versus a full shop?

02Is there a written brand thesis (who you are, who you serve, who you deliberately don't) that assortment, design and marketing decisions get tested against?

03Do people come in for reasons other than buying groceries, the bar, an event, somewhere to be, and can you measure how often?

04Does one named person approve every public-facing asset, post, sign, label, collab announcement, against a written voice guide before it goes out?

05Does your own label out-design the brands you carry?

06Is the store laid out as a path, from the bar past produce to prepared foods, with written sensory standards for light, music and scent rather than vibes?

07Does every new SKU clear written gates (trend-worthy, margin-worthy, velocity-worthy) with a review date set when the PO is cut?

08Did you kill at least one item last month on data, and did the exit look editorial rather than like clearance?

09Is every house-made item recipe-costed with ingredients, packaging, yield and a waste allowance, and is every special priced before it goes on the board?

10Does the kitchen produce to a daypart forecast rather than to a case of ingredients, with a written exit plan for every perishable decided before it's ordered?

11Is the schedule built from half-hourly transaction data by day of week, with a labor-percent target per department, rather than from how the manager wants the floor to feel?

12Is every team member certified on at least two stations by day 30, tracked on a skills matrix?

13Before the doors open, does the operator have yesterday's sales, labor percent, shrink and margin by department on one page, and does a weekly review produce written decisions?

14Is every delivery counted against the PO with credits claimed the same day, and do receipts stay pending until someone other than the receiver has matched PO to receipt to invoice?

15Does your system carry a live, item-level on-hand you trust enough to order from, with every waste, transfer and markdown recorded with a reason code and counts run on a written calendar?

16Do you have a written blended-margin target and a range by department role, with 50 to 100 known-value items price-checked against premium competitors monthly?

17Is pricing reviewed on a fixed monthly cycle with approval before any change, and is nobody able to change a price or menu outside that process?

18Is your online ordering served from the store's own inventory, with the same curation and voice as the floor, rather than rented from a third-party app?

19Is there a programming calendar, weekly newness, monthly activations, quarterly theater, with real gates for killing experiments that don't earn their space?

20Could you write down today which of your disciplines transfer to a second store by SOP and which have to be rebuilt on site?