• September 27, 2020September 29, 2020
• by Subroto Goswami

Restaurant Kitchen Hacks: How to Handle Peak Time Orders from the Kitchen

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As a Chef, who has worked with multiple kitchens of medium to large restaurants in big brands across India, I can say one thing with conviction. If your team in the kitchen is not trained to handle a peak time rush, then disaster is bound to strike in your establishment sooner or later. The failure to match up to high pressure performance during peak hours is definitely going to cost a lot in terms of goodwill and revenue.
It would be very wise as a restaurant entrepreneur, to invest in a proper training done for your line staff on how to handle the peak hour orders.
As a Consultant in the hospitality and restaurant management field,here’s my take on how you can build a team that is capable of handling peak hours effectively. This adds value to the enterprise and also helps portrait themselves as a brand that focuses on quality.

1. Understand your team: Evaluate each member of your kitchen brigade to understand their strengths and weaknesses in terms of work and attitude. Once that’s done the Chef has to then form the teams keeping the strong ones during the peak hours. So that they are well versed in their work and also have a positive attitude towards what they are doing. This will directly affect the work culture and indirectly affect the environment of the place.

2. Thorough knowledge of the menu & presentations: All the team members and especially those who would be handling the busy hours in the restaurant must memorize the menu and the presentation of the dishes. To ensure this, a lot of rehearsal before the launch of the menu will be necessary along with pre-meal time briefings. The practice before the launch of a new menu would make the team members confident and would also reduce the element of error resulting in less wastage and lesser food complaints. As a restaurant consultant, I would suggest that restaurants must create a “Picture Board” of all the dishes and place this board in a place of easy visibility to all kitchen teams. This would greatly reduce the error factor as there is a constant visual reminder as to how the dishes need to be finally presented on the plate.

3. Standard recipes of all the dishes: All the dishes in the menu must have standard recipes. These should be created in advance of launching the menu and must be circulated among the kitchen team. The team members in turn must learn them by heart and this needs to be checked randomly by the Chef in-charge. Also like the picture board, the recipe folder needs to be prominently displayed in the kitchen for everyone to refer to. There is a high possibility that people tend to forget the recipes very quickly and then resort to their own concoction which brings down the quality and standard of the particular restaurant. During spare times, the Chef in-charge must pick up a few dishes and ask the team to prepare and then he must cross check while it’s being done as to whether they are being prepared in accordance to the standard recipes or not. Any correction, if required, must be implemented without any delay.

4. Proper Mise-en-place: During my tenure as Executive Chef of Multi star Hotel Restaurants, I noticed that a lot of down-the-line staff do not pay attention to keeping their Mise-en-place ready for the peak time. When the peak time hits them, invariably the orders start getting delayed as time gets wasted in getting or preparing ingredients for the dishes. This must be monitored well by the chef in-charge and under no circumstances there should be any lapses allowed. Without a proper readiness of ingredients, there will be considerable slowdown and glitches that would occur during the peak time which would result in quality issues and delays in getting the food orders ready. Mise-en place is not limited to only food items. It applies to crockery/service gears as well, since any delay from the service side will result in delay to pick up the orders on time.

5. Manning the Pass: The pass or the final pickup counter of the restaurant must be manned at all times during the peak hours by an experienced chef. At no point of time should it be left unmanned or handed over to a junior level employee. As this is the final checkpoint of the food being prepared, any shortcomings can be controlled at this final check, beyond this it is the guest who would be giving the feedback which means there will be a complaint if something is not right. The Chef standing at the pass should be knowledgeable, experienced to handle high pressure and above all he must be completely focused on maintaining the quality set by the restaurant. Any lack of quality/standard of the dishes if noticed by the pass counter chef has to be strictly dealt with. If he/she compromises, then the final quality will be affected. Also, he should keep the tempo high during the peak hours. He should be communicating with the team continuously during this time. Encouraging the team for their good job, at the same time must correct any errors.

Bringing in an experienced restaurant consultant can help how your restaurant handles peak time orders. At Whitetruffle, we ensure restaurants can make the best utilisation of the resources available with apt culinary training.

Drop us an email on chefsubroto@whitetruffleconsultants.com or call us on +91- 99991 00817 to know what Chef Subroto has in store for your restaurant.