A lot of people hate small talk because of their success rate of small talk. “How are you doing?”, “yeah it’s good, how have you been?” “Not too bad”. “...”
There are many good opening lines, but I've found that simply asking "How's your week been?" works much better than a "How are you" because it nudges people to to tell a story.
Then I ask questions about that story.
Without it, the atmosphere gets really intense really quickly, which can be weird unless you're among old friends or people who have high emotional intelligence to start with (can't always count on that).