Every hot restaurant, hotel bar, or venue in this city was once just a construction fence with a projected opening date. Frontrunning means showing up while it’s still a fence, not waiting for the line out the door six months later. This is External API applied early: the business is about to build its own audience, and you want to be inside that circle before the audience shows up.
A new general manager or events director is usually easier to reach the month before opening than the month after, when everyone else has found them too. Reach out with something useful, not just congratulations, offer to help fill a slow Tuesday or bring a group in during the quiet preview period. Larry’s sell it first, then go make it logic applies here in reverse: get in the door first, then figure out what the relationship is actually worth.
Franchise thinking matters too, if a concept is opening its first Austin location, the team that built it elsewhere is often looking for exactly the kind of local relationship you’re offering. Keep notes the way PQRST demands, who you talked to, what they said their opening timeline actually was, what they need help with before the ribbon.
Being early costs you almost nothing but a little effort and a willingness to show up before there’s anything to show off yet. It pays off later because you’re not one of a thousand people trying to get a table once the place is written up everywhere.
Karma compounds here too, the staff who remember you being kind before opening night tend to remember you well after it. By the time the ribbon actually gets cut, you should already be a regular, not a new face in the crowd.
Details: Watch Larry explain frontrunning
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