Episode 86 The 9 Kitchen Management Systems You Should Not Live Without

The back-of-house operations of a restaurant can be the busiest and most hectic part of your restaurant The operation of your restaurant’s kitchen single-handedly decides the success of your establishment.

When you sign up for our mailing list, you’ll receive our 9 Kitchen Management Systems You Shouldn’t Live Without. (Link to the 9 Kitchen Management Systems You Shouldn’t Live Without)

• 9 Kitchen Management Systems You Shouldn’t Live Without:
  • Order Guide Please throw away your notebook and convert to a printed out inventory guide or better yet, use a device! Organized shelf to sheet Lean on your distributor for this – they would LOVE to help
  • Recipe Book
    • When your long-tenured prep cook moves on, you will wish you had everything written down/recorded in a safe place! 
    • Re-building is a tedious nightmare and bad for business
  • Costing Template
    • How do you know if your menu and staff are performing well if you don’t know how they are supposed to perform?
    • It’s tedious, but worth every second
  • Prep List
    • List it, print it, use it daily
    • For bonus points, add supervisor generated par levels depending on the day
  • Portion Guide
    • Make visible
    • Everyone should be on the same page
    • Promotes consistency and profitability (See “Costing Template”)
  • Build Sheets
    • Just like a portion guide, but for the entire menu item
    • “How many ounces of cheese on the pizza again?” is a question you should never hear!
    • See “Costing Template”
  • Line Check Sheet
    • A list built to mirror every item on the line
    • For each meal period and before service, a manager walks each station with the cook to ensure you have the right amount and the right quantity of the right items prior to opening the doors
    • Eliminates so many headaches
    • Increases effectiveness; induces acocuntability
  • Center of the Plate Inventory Guide 
    • If you are not going to count everything, at least count the items that matter most! 
    • COP items drive the cost, the price, the popularity and profit
    • Especially since these items are high theft items
  • Menu Descriptions
    • Take the time to describe each and every menu item in prose
      • Why do we have this item?
      • Why is it good?
      • Its significance?
      • Why customers will like it
      • Allergens?
      • Fun facts
    • Make your service staff experts! 
    • The less they leave the table to ask questions, the more they can tend to customers!

Sample Menu Descriptions

Thai Style Chicken Wings, Sesame, Green Onion

We use all-natural chicken for this application.  Springer Farms is in the Blue Ridge Mountains – they pride themselves on an antibiotic, growth hormone and otherwise chemical-free means of raising their poultry.  These animals are on strict vegetarian diet. Believe it or not, a lot of chicken producers out there feed their birds loads of stuff to make them grow more quickly and thus render the producer more profitable.  The health factors are not a consideration to most as the almighty dollar reigns as top priority.  That being said, we fully support what the fine folks in the mountains are doing with their poultry. 

These wings are cured in sugar, salt and black pepper for an hour and then tossed in the oven to slowly roast.  Once they are cooked through, we cool them and they are ready for service.  The pre-cooking process not only assures us that we will never serve raw wings, also aids in evaporating all of the water in the skin.  What this does is renders the skin super duper crispy during the frying process.  No one likes a soggy wing. 

Once out of the fryer, these little niblets are tossed in a mix of sesame oil, brown sugar, soy sauce, mirin, ginger and fresno chilies.  The end result is perfectly balanced – sweet, salty, sticky, crispy and rich.  

We garnish them with a sprinkle of toasted sesame and green onion. 

Grilled Halloumi Cheese, Pomegranate Seeds, Pomegranate Molasses, Toasted Pistachios

Halloumi is Greek by nature and is known for its high melting point and “grill-ability” – it can be seared, fried or grilled and does not lose its structural integrity.  That is pretty abnormal for cheese!

It is typically made from a mix of goat, sheep and/or cow’s milk.  It is very firm and almost squeaks when you eat it. 

The grilling of these products imparts a smoky and charred flavor to the otherwise neutral flavors it has raw.  Once off the grill, we hit it with a bit of pomegranate molasses, or a highly acidic and syrupy reduction of pomegranate juice. 

We garnish it with simply toasted pistachios and pomegranate seeds, both of which offer great aesthetics, textural contrast and flavor contrast – toastiness and depth from the pistachios and bright acidity from the pomegranates. 

 Pomegranates are a sweet & tart collection of ruby red seeds that are clustered into a bulb of rough, outer skin.  Their culinary roots date back to ancient Iran and Northern India but are now cultivated all over the world.  Not only are they delicious, but the medicinal qualities are so vast that i will not even attempt writing them in this segment.  Just google it!

When you sign up for our mailing list, you’ll receive our 9 Kitchen Management Systems You Shouldn’t Live Without. (Link to the 9 Kitchen Management Systems You Shouldn’t Live Without)

When you sign up for our mailing list, you’ll receive our 9 Kitchen Management Systems You Shouldn’t Live Without. (Link to the 9 Kitchen Management Systems You Shouldn’t Live Without)