When Buon Cibo opened its doors in Scripps Ranch on February 21, 2026, we weren’t introducing ourselves to the neighborhood. We were welcoming people who had been following along for months. 1,500 of them were on our email list. About 3,000 were following us on social media. People walked in on day one already knowing what we sold, what we stood for, and what they wanted to try first.
None of that happened by accident. Here’s how we did it.
Two ways to handle social media before you open
Most new restaurants go one of two ways.
The quiet launch. Grab the name, post an announcement, then go silent until opening day. When a restaurant group does this with tens of thousands of dollars of PR and media behind it, the silence works. It reads as confidence, and the press does the talking for them. Without that budget, silence just looks like nobody’s home.
Building in public. You show the real process: the build-out, the menu decisions, the tastings, the setbacks. People want to feel like they’re part of the journey, like they’re watching the decisions get made in real time. That’s the one we chose. It costs time instead of a PR budget, and for an independent owner that’s almost always the better trade.
Start early, and plan for the date to move
Our plan was to start posting about six months before opening. We also thought we’d open sooner than we did. Like most openings, ours took longer than planned.
That turned out to help. A longer runway meant we had to keep giving people reasons to stay, and it made us good at it. If your opening slips, don’t go quiet. Tell people what’s happening. The updates are part of the story.
Show people what doesn’t exist yet
Before we opened, we didn’t have the umbrellas, the plates, or the tables. What we did have was a clear picture of how the place would look and feel. So we used AI to show it: concept images of the space, the setting, and the food we planned to serve.
A lot of owners are nervous about using AI because they’re afraid of the backlash. Here’s what actually happened to us. Out of the thousands of people following along, I can count the complaints on one hand: five people, total. Three of them still spend money with us. The other two probably never were customers. Your customers mostly want to see what’s coming.
What worked for us: images realistic enough to show the idea clearly, but not trying to pass as real photos. People knew they were looking at a concept, and they liked being let in on it. AI images were rougher then than they are now, and they still worked.
One call to action, everywhere
Every post, our profile, and the website asked for the same thing:
Join our email list to be the first to know, get invited to our grand opening, and have a chance to win prizes at the grand opening.
One ask, repeated everywhere, with three real reasons to say yes. We didn’t split people’s attention between following, liking, sharing, and signing up. Followers are nice. An email address is a direct line to a customer that no algorithm can take away.
A website built to collect emails
Our first website was a simple Squarespace site, and the signup form was the main event: big, obvious, and well designed. Right next to it, we said exactly what people would get from us and promised not to spam them. That promise matters. People are protective of their inbox, and telling them what to expect makes it easier to say yes.
Once the ads were running, I kept testing the homepage and the wording of the signup offer, keeping whichever version turned more visitors into subscribers.
Write like you’re updating a friend
Before opening, we sent an email every few weeks. No hard sell, just updates: what got built, what we were tasting, what was coming next. Written the way you’d catch up a friend who asked how the project was going.
People opened them because they felt like news from someone they knew, not marketing. (That habit is why the list still opens so well today. I wrote about that in what a 60% open rate looks like.)
Ads: small budget, tight radius, one goal
This is where most owners waste money.
We ran ads on Instagram only, because on our budget it was cheaper than Facebook. And we only showed them to people who lived within about four miles of the store.
It sounds obvious, but hardly anyone does it. Local businesses let the platform find whoever is cheapest to reach, and end up with followers who will never drive over. The people near us were the ones who got excited, shared our posts, commented, and eventually walked in. They were our real customers.
Every campaign was set up for one result: an email signup. Not reach, not engagement, not followers. With the page tested and the audience kept local, we paid $3 to $5 for each new subscriber, and the list grew 3 to 5% every week. Because each week built on the last, the growth compounded.
What I’d tell any owner getting ready to open
- Start at least six months out, and plan for the date to move.
- Show the process, including the decisions and the setbacks.
- If you can’t photograph it yet, show a concept, and don’t pretend it’s a photo.
- Pick one call to action and repeat it everywhere.
- Make the signup the center of your website, and say what people will get.
- Show ads only to people who can actually walk in, and optimize for email signups.
- Email every few weeks, like you’re writing to a friend.
On opening day, you want a room full of people who already feel like regulars.