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The decision to reopen your business marks a pivotal chapter in your entrepreneurial story. Whether you’re a local retailer reopening after a temporary closure, a restaurant restarting seasonal operations, a service business coming back from a personal hiatus, or a gym reopening after renovations, this moment is an opportunity to reintroduce your vision with renewed focus. A successful small business reopening isn’t just about unlocking the doors—it’s about strategically relaunching in a marketplace that increasingly blends digital and physical experiences.
Today’s business landscape demands an omnichannel approach, where seamless online engagement drives in-person traffic, and efficient operations ensure sustainability and loyalty. This guide provides you with a reopening plan with essential strategies, from refining your offerings to reconnecting with your community. Let’s explore closing and reopening a business in a way that builds momentum and ensures your business’s next successful chapter.
What to consider before reopening your business
A successful business reopening requires thoughtful preparation beyond just turning on the lights. Before announcing your return, take time to conduct a thorough business assessment to ensure a strong, sustainable relaunch:
- Ensure financial and operational readiness by reviewing your cash flow, updating your budget, and ensuring your physical space, equipment, and supply chains are operational.
- Verify your compliance with local guidelines, making sure you’ve obtained any necessary licensing or permits, and are in full compliance with safety or zoning regulations that may affect your operations.
- Assess your staffing needs, including your ideal team structure, rehiring needs, and plan for training on any new procedures or offerings.
- Re-evaluate your core offerings, including your product mix, service offerings, menu, or operating hours to ensure they align with current market demand and your refined business model.
Steps to successfully reopen your business
With a solid assessment complete, you’re ready to move from planning a business reopening to the action stage. Here’s a clear roadmap to guide your reopening process, ensuring you rebuild momentum efficiently while reinforcing customer trust. Consolidating operations onto fewer tools can streamline your reopening. Square reconnects payments, staff, customers, and cash flow in one place.
1. Review and update your business plan
When you have closed and reopened your business, it’s crucial to take stock of how your business performed before closing.
Reopening your business presents a strategic opportunity to review and update your business plan. An outdated business plan from when you first started won’t serve your new reality, making a comprehensive review and update an essential first step. You’ll want to ensure every operational decision aligns with a clear, forward-looking strategy for your relaunch:
- Conduct a new SWOT analysis to assess your business’s current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the context of a changed market.
- Refine your value proposition to determine what makes your reopened business uniquely appealing to customers. Have your core offerings or target audience shifted? If so, how?
- Update your financial projections. Create revised forecasts, including a reopening budget, revised sales projections, and a clear path to renewed profitability.
- Formalize operational changes, including new processes, updated hours, revised staffing models, or any new technology you’ve integrated.
- Set new goals and milestones by establishing specific, measurable, and time-bound objectives for your first 90 days, six months, and first year after business reopening.
A revitalized plan will help guide your daily decisions and ensure you secure the necessary financial and human resources to reopen your business after a temporary closure.
2. Prepare your space for reopening
A thoughtful and welcoming physical environment is a critical component of successfully reopening your business. Beyond basic cleaning and maintenance, you also need to ensure the safety and functionality of your space and create an atmosphere that re-engages customers and staff:
- Conduct a thorough deep clean and perform necessary maintenance or repairs on equipment, fixtures, and utilities.
- Review layout and flow by assessing your floor plan for efficiency and safety, considering spacing for customers and staff, and updating any signage for clarity.
- Refresh and rebrand by implementing visual updates, whether a fresh coat of paint or new decor, to signal change and renewal.
- Stock up on inventory and set up cleaning stations so everything is organized before opening day.
3. Train and staff your team
Motivated, well-trained employees keep your business running and your employees inspired. The dilemma for many owners when closing and reopening a business is balancing employee satisfaction with profitability, especially if they’ve experienced a drop in income due to the business closure. Here are some tips for preparing your staff, old and new, for your business reopening:
- Reconnect with former staff first to gauge their interest and availability. Their existing experience is a valuable asset. Thank any employees who return for their loyalty.
- Audit your staffing needs, and clearly define the roles and hours required for your new operating model, which may differ from your pre-closure structure.
- Consider a phased approach where you start with a core team and gradually increase staff as customer traffic and revenue steadily return.
- Host a formal reopening orientation where all staff can come together to review the renewed business vision, updated offerings, and any new core procedures.
- Prioritize role-specific and cross-training to ensure each employee is expert at their primary duties while also being flexible to perform key functions as needed. Square Team Management helps you manage shifts and provides valuable insights that can improve employee productivity.
- Implement new systems, and provide dedicated time for hands-on training for new technology, point-of-sale systems, or safety protocols you’ve adopted. Use Square Payroll to easily track employee hours, pay employees, and manage employee benefits.
- Solicit feedback by establishing an open channel for employees to ask questions and provide input on new processes during your initial business reopening period.
4. Refresh or relaunch your marketing
- Stay visible in search. Your customers’ search for businesses to patronize begins online. Mobile searches containing the words “near me” number nearly 1.5 billion each month.
- Update your website and directory listings to reflect any changes in your business hours, products, or services. Optimize your website for search by using the keywords your customers are likely to use when searching for the products and services you offer.
- Get active on social media. Nearly 84% of US adults are active on at least one social media channel, so if your business isn’t active on social media, then you’re likely missing out on a lot of potential customers. To get back on track, start posting content regularly on social media. While you may not have the bandwidth to post every day, consistency is key.
- Offer loyalty programs or rewards. Square Future of Commerce research shows that 78% of consumers would use loyalty programs for local businesses if offered.
- Send regular email newsletters. Data shows email marketing pays off: For every dollar a business spends on email marketing, businesses get an ROI of $36. Square Marketing allows you to create automated campaigns, built through your existing customer data, using predesigned templates. This means you can draft and schedule emails ahead of time. Plus, you can easily monitor campaign efforts from your Square Dashboard so it’s easy to see what’s working.
- Run paid ads to spotlight your business reopening. Paid ads on social sites have a particularly good ROI. The average ROI across all social platforms in 2025 was $5.28 per $1 spent. Square Marketing integrates with social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, making paid social ads easy to manage.
5. Update your technology and operational workflows
In recent years, many businesses have introduced new channels to better serve their customers. Some restaurants, for example, shifted to takeout and delivery, which meant creating an online store and introducing new technology and restaurant management tools to make the transition from on-premise to off-premise dining seamless.
Today, maintaining an omnichannel experience is crucial to providing your customers with the convenience and choices they desire. To continue operating effectively, consider new tools/technology that will help you streamline your business activities, enabling you to deliver a consistent customer experience across all channels. It’s particularly important to choose a technology, such as Square Point of Sale or Square Kitchen Display System (KDS), that serves as a central system and connects seamlessly to other important business operations.
Embracing technology will make reopening your business easier. Use tools that improve and simplify key business processes, from marketing to supply chain and inventory management to customer communication.
Essential Business Reopening Checklist
A smooth reopening plan hinges on attention to both behind-the-scenes logistics and customer-facing updates. Use this checklist to ensure critical tasks are completed before you welcome back your first customer:
- Update signage, hours, and policies with a refresh of in-store signs, hours, or return policies, and update listings on Google, Yelp, and social platforms.
- Review supplier relationships and confirm product availability with vendors. Confirm delivery schedules, check on pricing, and secure necessary inventory for reopening week.
- Verify your POS systems and payments is functioning by fully testing your point-of-sale system, card readers, and any contactless payment options to prevent opening-day delays.
- Set up online booking or ordering. Ensure your website’s booking calendar, online store, or ordering platform is live, functional, and accurately reflects your services or stock.
- Revisit pricing, menu, and service sets. Finalize any updated pricing, streamlined menus, or revised service packages based on current costs and market demand.
- Draft and schedule business reopening announcements for email, social media, and press releases. Update your website homepage and contact information.
By methodically working through these key steps, you’ll build a strong operational foundation for a confident and successful business reopening.
Closing and reopening a business FAQs
What is needed to reopen a small business?
A successful business reopening requires a solid plan addressing finances, operations, updated offerings, and clear customer communication.
How long does it take to reopen?
The timeline to reopen can range from a few weeks to several months, depending on the scope of needed preparations and local requirements.
What should I update before reopening?
Before reopening, you should update your business plan, physical space, staffing model, digital presence, and all customer-facing information.
How do I bring customers back?
To bring customers back, proactively communicate your return through marketing channels and incentivize visits with compelling reopening promotions or offers.
