A customer orders x.. The kitchen starts preparing it.. But in few seconds another guy orders the same dish.. Do they start fresh for the next order? Chime on the previous order . What’s the strategy?
In: 171
PREP.
The reason restaurants have a menu, is so that the cook/ chef can plan how and what to cook.
I make food, when I get a ticket with multiple of the same item, I make as many as I can at a time. If I’ve started making something, and I get the same item a few minutes later, it just depends on how close to done something is.
This is done in two main ways.
First, Stations.
Cooks in restaurants are in charge of “the grill”, or “the salads”, or “the sides”, or “the fryer”. The main cook/head chef will often read out the order. Each station listens for the things they have to prepare. Once ready, the head chef handles making it look pretty on the plate.
Second, Preparation.
If it can be done early it will. Even noodles can be par-boiled to reduce cook times. (Had a job that did this for portions too)
(Fun Fact: Many times in restaurants, “Steamed Veggies” are not steamed. Most cooks blanche them as it’s faster and helps retain crispness and color.)
Cook that does exactly this here: it’s pretty much exactly how you describe it. Cooking things ahead of time that won’t likely be ordered will just result in wasted food, so we only start the final preparation of the dish (grilling meat, plating) once the order comes in.
Under normal operation this means for every new bill you’ll begin cooking the new dish(es) independently of the previous ones. If you’re backed up however you might bundle multiple orders together to save on trips to the cooler, space in the oven etc.
Note that this only applies to the final preparation of the dish. Everything that can be done without having to throw (substantial amounts of) it out if not many people order it is made ahead of time to a certain quantity determined by how much we expect we will need, with some extra in case of anomalies.
They don’t start a dish from scratch each time. They build dishes out of “building blocks” if you will, and just combine it different ways for each unique dish. If you think about something like Chipotle or Subway (I know this is not what you are asking but just go with it) they have less than two dozen items all in different containers, and put them together in different ways to make hundreds (thousands?) of combinations. So different kinds of pastas are mostly ready to go, and then different sauces, and then a “base” of a salad and then a bunch of “add ons” for the salads to make different kinds, different meats are already cooked and just warm and ready to go. So cooked chicken can go in a salad, or in a pasta dish or whatever. So these different base items are available, and many of them are already made and in sitting in bags ready to be warmed up (depending on the actual restaurant).
It would depend entirely on what it is. Some things are handled as they come, like steaks and chicken breasts; You can’t realistically cook those ahead of time.
*HOWEVER.*
If I’m on the line at a place that mainly sells chicken wings, and we’re in a dinner rush, I’m NOT just dropping what is being rang in. Let’s say I have a total of 120 wings I have to cook that have all rang in in the last 8 minutes. I’m gonna go ahead and drop 160, at least, because I can reasonably expect that, if 120 have come in in 8 minutes, it is not unreasonable to think that at least 20-40 more will ring in before the 120 I need are done, ESPECIALLY since it’s a dinner rush. They’ll be gone long before they get too cold to safely sell, especially combined with a heat lamp, which such a place will absolutely have.
I would do the same thing with burgers if I know from experience that I’m going to be selling a lot, though you have to be careful with how much you sandbag; You don’t want to waste food, but you CAN’T sell unsafe food.
Also, depending on how quickly it comes in, you can just drop more at the same time. Let’s say 2 orders of scrambled eggs walk in. Oil your pan, add your eggs, scrambled the yolks and whites real fast, and put it on the heat. If, within the next minute or so, 2 more orders of scrambled eggs come in, you can simply add it in the same pan; They’ll all become done at the same time (Simplified a little bit).
There are tons of little tricks, many specific to certain individual locations of even the same franchise, for dealing with this exact problem.
TL;DR Cook a little more than what is ordered if you have good reason to believe you’ll sell it in time/Some things can have more added if caught early enough. Barring those two, the honest answer is to just move faster.
Just go watch Hells Kitchen, you’ll sorta understand after that but also have a new show to watch!
This restaurant popped up on my Youtube recommendations a few weeks ago for reasons unknown to me but I quickly got hooked because for me it answered my questions along the lines of yours. I’d read about how restaurant service worked, both on social media and in Anthony Bourdain and other chef’s books, but I had a hard time conceptualizing what that actually looked like.
Enter Fallow, with their really neat POV cams for the head chef and others that really shows how it comes together and what’s prepared beforehand and what’s done fresh.
https://www.youtube.com/@FallowLondon
Latest Answers