The 60-day rule: how Dragon House tests every new restaurant location

Opening a new restaurant site is one of the most stressful decisions an independent operator can make. You have done the research, signed the lease, fitted out the space and hired the team. And then you wait.

But how long should you wait before you know whether it is actually going to work?

Robert Wang, founder of Dragon House, has a pretty clear answer. Two months.

"About two months and you know your customers," he told us on the latest episode of the Flipdish Takeaways podcast.

"You know how the customer likes, how easy they complain, what they want. Two months would be enough. And then you do whatever you can and pick up the business."

It is a deceptively simple framework from someone who has earned the right to have one. Robert opened his first Dragon House site in Dublin 10 during COVID in 2020, at a time when most operators were closing rather than opening. He has since grown to three locations across Ireland, including Dragon House in Roscrea, and is still going.

Why location research has to happen before you sign anything

Robert is clear that the two-month clock only starts once you have already done your homework on the area. The decision to open is not a gut feeling. It is a research exercise.

"In this business you really need the location," he said. "You need to see the location and then do some research on that area."

For Dragon House Dublin 10, that research told him the area had high residential density, which meant a consistent local customer base rather than relying on passing trade or tourism. That foundation mattered enormously, particularly during COVID when footfall patterns were completely unpredictable.

For operators doing that research now, understanding delivery behaviour in a new area is just as important as understanding the physical footfall. Flipdish's data and insights tools can help you get a clearer picture of ordering patterns, peak times and average order values in your existing locations, which gives you a useful benchmark when you are assessing whether a new area stacks up.

What the first two months actually tell you

Robert's two-month window is not arbitrary. It reflects something real about how a new customer base behaves.

In the first few weeks, you are getting your earliest adopters, the people who try everything new in the area. They are useful but they are not representative. By the end of month two, the novelty has worn off and you start to see your real repeat rate. You start to understand what people actually want from you rather than what they tried out of curiosity.

"You know how the customer likes and how easy they complain," Robert said. "Obviously they want fast food, best service. Two months would be enough."

The complaints are particularly telling. Not because complaints are a bad sign, but because the nature of them tells you what gap you are filling and where the friction is. A customer who complains is a customer who cares enough to say something. Robert takes every complaint seriously, handling them personally where he can and following up by phone when needed.

"If you ignore it, the problem gets bigger," he said. "I sometimes make phone calls and ask my customer what went wrong. And then I guarantee my customers have a good product next time."

That responsiveness in the early weeks of a new site is not just good customer service. It is intelligence gathering.

Getting the word out from day one

Knowing your two-month window is coming puts real pressure on how you approach the opening campaign. You cannot afford to spend the first month figuring out your marketing.

For Robert, flyers are still a meaningful part of announcing a new site, particularly in the communities Dragon House operates in. But digital presence runs alongside that from the start.

"The first thing I go to is Flipdish," he said. "That's my first campaign and my marketing. They have fantastic people. They're really, really good for thinking about your business."

Having online ordering live from the moment you open means you are capturing data on your customers from day one. That data becomes one of your most valuable assets during those first two months, telling you who is ordering, how often, what they are spending and when they go quiet. The sooner you start collecting it, the sooner you can act on it.

Building the team that runs it without you

One of the things that makes Robert's multi-site model work is that he is not trying to be in three places at once. Each Dragon House location has its own manager. Robert handles the back office. He trusts his people to run the day-to-day.

"I have three shop managers. They manage the day-to-day work," he said. "If I'm not good at something, I don't say anything. In the kitchen, I won't interfere with the chef's job. I only give feedback from the customers."

That kind of structured autonomy is what makes growth sustainable. Without it, the two-month assessment period becomes impossible because the founder is too busy firefighting to actually read what the location is telling them.

Building that layer of trusted management takes time, but Robert's approach of hiring people who know their craft and letting them get on with it is a practical model that any operator thinking about a second or third site should take seriously. A reliable EPOS system helps those managers run day-to-day operations cleanly, giving them the end-of-day reporting and order management they need without having to pull the owner into every decision.

What happens after two months

If the two months have gone well, you know what you have. You know your customer, you know your peak times, you know where the friction is and you know what your repeat rate looks like.

If things have not gone to plan, Robert's view is not to panic but to act. The two months give you enough information to make adjustments rather than just hoping things improve. Tweak the menu, look at your loyalty programme to push retention, adjust your opening hours, listen harder to what customers are actually asking for.

Dragon House introduced Korean sauce to its menu after conversations with customers and chefs in one of its newer locations. That kind of ongoing menu evolution, driven by listening rather than guesswork, is exactly what the two-month window is designed to enable.

"You throw brand new ideas in, you try it. If it fails, you take it off. There's no bad effect," Robert said.

The two months do not give you all the answers. But they give you enough of the right questions to start building something worth staying in.

Listen to the full episode

This conversation is from Season 3 of the Flipdish Takeaways podcast. Robert Wang covers everything from opening during COVID and handling fake Google reviews to his favourite Dublin restaurant and his death row meal.

Listen to the Flipdish Takeaways podcast here