i know this sounds like a stupid question but how do cook to order restaurants work? how often do they have to throw away food? and do they keep the leftovers for the next day(/s?)
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General operation of restaurants
When your order is taken it’s put into a computer which has software that breaks that order down into component parts.
The kitchen is broken down into “stations”. The exact delineation of the stations (how many, what they are responsible for, etc) depends on the cuisine, restaurant size, etc, but as an example you might have: a fry station, grill, saute, someone assembling salads and deserts. These stations may be staffed by one or more people. Each station has a defined set of responsibilities that make up the whole of a dinner.
So when you order that aged prime new york strip with asparagus and a béarnaise sauce and crispy pomme frites, it gets broken down into multiple tickets, each routed to the specific “station” that needs to cook it. The grill station knows they need to grab a new york strip and cook it medium rare, the sauté (usually the guy in charge of the kitchen that night) knows to broil some asparagus and plate it with béarnaise sauce, and the fry station knows to drop the fries in the fryer.
The real key is timing this all out, sophisticated kitchen software can help with this, but even with paper tickets a good chef can articulate the timing and a well practiced team knows it anyways. The order comes in at 8:24pm, grill knows the steaks are done in 11 minutes, asparagus done in 12 minutes, and fries done in about 15 minutes (béarnaise is probably already done and just waiting to be sauced). So the fries are going in immediately, but saute and the grill might wait a couple of minutes to time it closer.
As elements get done they are often passed to the expeditor or expedite line. It’s basically a station, often with the primary serving dishes and garnishes, where the various independent elements from the multiple stations are combined on a plate in a pleasing manner. The person filling this role can be a variety of people (including someone working at another station like the saute chef in smaller kitchens) but the point is, there is usually one person who assembles all the elements together, does a final quality check, and makes it look nice before a waiter takes it (think Gordon Ramsay in Hell’s Kitchen).
As you can imagine, in order to efficiently operationalize a kitchen you have to be thoughtful of the “how” it gets made. The example above involves 3 different stations and the food comes out pretty close to each other. The most labor intensive part is probably the béarnaise but, as noted, that can be made before kitchen service begins and just sits warm for the night. For things that take a long time to cook, there are often tricks you can use to kind of “stage” the food until later before opening for service. For instance baked potatoes can largely just sit in a warmer in tinfoil waiting to be used, Standing Rib Roast you can cook below rare and then just slice a serving off and quickly “warm” it to the desired level of doneness, in-house pastries and bread goods are made that morning (the pastry chef is often walking out, done for the day, around when everyone else is just showing up to work).
You don’t want to overprep but with history (and again, ordering software can help with this) you can get a pretty good idea of how many baked potatoes you go through in an average Friday night and plan accordingly. If it’s unusually busy at 7:30 you might try to prep a few extra incase you get walk-ins at 9:30 and you think you might be low, but in some cases restaurants just accept running out (if it’s that late).
Pricing is easy. If you do a good job designing the menu and train your kitchen staff competently, you know exactly how much our example meal costs. There’s some variance in portioning (it’s possible to get more or less asparagus or béarnaise sauce) but keep in mind these people cook this meal over and over and over. If you can retain staff they get practiced enough that portions and cooking gets consistent as well.
As a result you can keep food waste usually pretty small. Some items are more sensitive than most, frozen fries aren’t going to be wasted, but fish isn’t going to last very long.
For nice restaurants using fresh ingredients you’ll frequently see specials, stripped down menus, and changing menus to accommodate for that. Too much asparagus? Well it’s not just a side dish anymore, let’s maybe do an asparagus tips salad (and cut off the now woody ends), that’ll at least trim our potential food waste down. Ordered some bluefin tuna? You’d rather run out by Sunday night service than have some left Monday morning.
For less nice restaurants (think franchises) they’re going to lean away from fresh ingredients at risk of spoiling. Glancing quickly at TGIF’s menu, their seafood consists of fried cod filets, various forms of shrimp, and two salmon dishes (one heavily sauced) that I’m almost positive come to the store frozen. That’s how those chain restaurants get away with such sprawling menus, it’s all designed to not be sensitive to spoiling and having to be tossed (heavily saucing things is a way to hide this. Lots of sauces/glazes promote a restaurant feel because home cooks don’t want to fuss with the effort while simultaneously doing a good job of covering up mediocre proteins that are frozen so you can keep food costs and waste down).
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