Nobody sees the test kitchen. That’s the point.
Three weeks before we open anything, we disappear. The team works. We make the thing, tear it apart, make it again. We throw away a lot. We argue about things that seem small and then we remind ourselves that there are no small things in a room where people are paying attention.
The test kitchen is where we figure out what we actually believe, versus what we thought we believed when we were planning it. Planning is optimistic. The test kitchen is honest.
If it doesn’t work on a bad day, it doesn’t go on the menu. This rule has saved us from ourselves more than once.
By the end of three weeks, you’re sick of it. You’ve made it thirty times. You know exactly what can go wrong and you’ve built systems to catch it.
Then you open the doors, and someone orders it, and you watch them eat it.
And you let yourself feel, for just a moment, that it was worth it. Then you go back to work.