Hi, everyone. Welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks.
My name is Eric. I'm here with Phil, a .k .a.
Michelle Lin. And yeah, today we wanted to share
some ideas on restaurant organization. But before
that, you're listening to Heritage Radio Network.
So, Phil. How do you organize yourself in a kitchen?
Do you use paper or do you use softwares or apps?
And what's your approach on these tools? Like,
for example, your to -do list, do you do it in
the evening? for the next day after service or
you do it when you arrive or half -half or how
is your like normal day organization like in
a routine where you you build up your prep and
everything so i mean i use a mix of things i
use apps for certain things i need i use paper
for other things talking about prep lists i i
think it's the best for years now that you do
a prep list in the evening I think after a service,
you are most in tune with what is where, how
many portions you have sold of what, you know,
what you're running low of, what you need to
prioritize, all that sort of stuff. It's all
fresh. It's all fresh in your head. In the morning
when you come in, it's less fresh. I used to
write prep lists by hand. Nowadays, I like having
a printed out prep list. I like to do it in a
way where I make a graph. or a table more like,
where I put sections of dishes and in that section
I will put every ingredient or like every component
that I need for the dish. So like every dish,
it's a list on its own. It's a checklist of the
components you need to have for that dish. correct
correct and it might not even it might be preparations
it might be you know certain things turn the
oven on or something like that or yeah it could
be like um oh i know that for this dish i need
a container with a little brush because at the
very end i'm going to dust the powder over it
so i need the brush to brush it as part of my
setup right So at night I would fill in what
I need where. Usually I have the name of the
components, you know, I'll be sort of like, I
need some roasted leeks, I need some lemon confit,
I need this, I need that, I need blah. And I
will leave a section where I can write how much
of it I need, right? Like one recipe, two recipes,
20 portions, whatever it is, right? So maybe
I have a couple of portions left from the night
before that I can rotate. But regardless of that,
I'll fill that in at night. In the morning, the
first thing that I do if I'm a chef de party,
if I'm setting up a section, is I go through
my section. I go through my section again. I
open up everything. I get a lay of the land.
This is especially important if you do a handover,
right? We have this problem all the time. When
you're in bigger kitchens where people are handing
over sections, the person that was there in the
night, ideally you're scheduled on so that you
don't do a clopening. Clopening being you close
and you open, right? We all love Kloppenings.
Six hours sleep. You can look at the prep list,
but don't take it for granted. You have to get
a hold of your section. You have to grab the
bull by the horns. You have to be in control.
You have to know what's where. It's impossible
that I come to you and I say, hey, where is the
vinaigrette? And you have to start looking for
it. You should know where it is. You should know
that it's in the bottom drawer on the left -hand
side, because you checked your section, you know
where everything is. To me, it's already like
an alarm bell. If I ask a chef de party or a
demi -chef himself, like, hey, can I have a little
bit of your vinaigrette? And he's like, where
is it? And it's like 11 .30, and I'm like, that
is not a good sign. Okay, let's say you built
your station, you went through your checklist.
Do you do all these checks on your own, or do
you find a pier and you do it? like together
or how does it work best for you it really depends
i mean that's that's the job of a chef the party
right so for people who don't know the old school
kitchen structure still maintains you know prevalent
internationally to this day where you move up
from the bottom of the chain of commands you
have the commies they're basically the lowest
cooks to the demi chefs then the chef the parties
chef the parties are basically the head chef
of their little section so if you're the chef
the party of the garde manger you are basically
the head chef of the little like starter section
and that is what you manage and you have a demi
chef which is basically like your sous chef who
will be a fairly like experienced cook with a
couple of years of experience and you have a
commie which will be a very young green i mean
not young necessarily but like young inexperienced
very green very fresh cook And you manage those.
So you, as a chef de party, you delegate the
tasks to the people on your section. And then
as you move up in the kitchen, you become a junior
sous chef, sous chef, and then eventually a head
chef, right? And a sous chef then looks over
the chef de parties and makes sure that they're
working and the head chef looks over everything,
right? So it's a gradual climb. For me, it's
important that the chef at the party manages
this. And if there is no chef at the party present,
if there's a commie or a demi -chef, there needs
to be the most important thing, one of the most
important things, top two most important things
in the kitchen, communication. Absolutely. Communication.
It's kind of like, okay, you make yourself responsible,
especially when you're a demi -chef, you should
do this anyway. You say, okay, I come in. I check
everything. I make myself a list of what I think
I need to do. If I don't have a chef at the party,
I will go to a sous -chef. And I will say, hey,
this is my plan for today. What do you think?
And it either gets approved or not. It's important
because time management is so crucial, right?
A lot of people don't really understand. Like,
I think they understand the concept, but they
don't understand the reality of it. Is that what
makes cooking at a high level so stressful is
that you have all these little timers that are
going off at different times. You know, you have
timers that, say you come in at nine o 'clock.
Lunch service starts at 12. That's a timer. That's
a three -hour timer that's ticking down. You
have to make it until 12 o 'clock. You have to.
Unnegotiable. So the things that you have to
do to be set up need to happen in those three
hours. Then you kind of start looking at the
amount of prep that you have and you say, like,
okay, I have to braise these ox cheeks. Already
you understand because that takes longer than
three hours. But say you have something that
takes a long time. I need to reduce the stock.
It's going to take me at least an hour and a
half because I need to reduce it slowly. That
should be your priority. If that's another timer,
hour and a half. You need to fit that into those
three hours. And then you prioritize all these
jobs that take the longest. You try to get them
working simultaneously as much as you can. And
you leave all the little things to the end so
that you can get the most amount of work done
in that time. And then obviously those timers,
they continue into service from ticket to ticket,
from dish to dish. And they just multiply and
multiply and multiply. And there's a lot of things
to keep track of. And there's a lot of pressure,
a lot of stress. And this is something a teacher
told me when I was studying design. And I said
that I was working in a kitchen in a restaurant.
And he said, like, by definition, chefs are very
good project managers. You know, I'm not sure
if I'm a great project manager, but for sure,
I've never crossed a deadline. You know, like,
you make it on time. It doesn't matter. How?
You know, like you just need to figure it out.
You know, like there are like millions of ways.
Phil, do you recommend podcasts to your friends?
All the time. The best way of showing friends
that you care is recommending a great podcast
to listen to. I agree. If you're listening right
now, you should show your love by recommending
our show to all your best friends. It will make
them happy. It will make us happy. PopLock Food
Talks. Tell your friends. It will make the world
a better place. You do use some apps or software.
Like which ones are for what or in which context
do you use digital tools? There's a lot of technology
that I've seen that is very helpful in kitchens.
And you specifically, you work in a lot of those
sort of things as well. While they are really
great and I see a lot of value in them, I don't
use that many. Not because I don't want to, just
because it's not really given right now in the
environment that I'm in. But I wouldn't be opposed
to. But I use apps for all HR -related things.
But apart from that, honestly, like costing,
scheduling, vacation planning, I use Excel. You
know, like it's pretty old school. Like I have
a system that works for me that like calculates
this stuff. I used to, you know, you have to
use scheduling apps these days. It has to be
like, especially, you know, you have to keep
track of something, you know, the hours need
to be calculated, et cetera. It's important.
Yeah, and also by law, it's also like a good
way to, Accountability. For accountability reasons,
you need to have some evidence that you can show.
Absolutely, yeah. The thing is that what I found,
me personally, is that a lot of these apps are
a little bit poorly designed. If I need to manage
six, seven different sections, and on each section,
in one day, I have three to four people working,
it's very hard for me to keep an overview. Are
there enough people scheduled on every day for
lunch? Are there enough people scheduled on every
day for dinner? It gets often, you would be surprised.
You know, you'd think somebody would make an
effort to make it like super easy to view this.
But you have to imagine in my kitchen team, there's
almost 40 chefs at some point. You know, it's
like between 30 and 40 chefs, a lot of fucking
people. But I need to be able to take a step
back and look at the week and just kind of browse
through. I have enough people for breakfast.
I have enough people for lunch. I have enough
people for dinner. I have enough people for prep.
So for that, it's very, very useful. And you
said you use Excel for your costs. What do you
have, like a table somebody gave you at some
point and that's the one you use or cost calculation,
pricing and all of this? Yeah, correct. I have
a table that Katie gave me at one point, which
is very useful, like 10 years ago or something
like that. But it's good because it does very
simple things, right? You make... So for people
who don't understand how costing works in a restaurant,
say you have a dish, there's a steak, there's
some french fries seasoned with rosemary salt,
there's a salad dressed with a vinaigrette, right?
And there's maybe a sauce. So the steak is easily
calculated, right? You get a piece of meat in,
it costs a certain amount, you lose a certain
amount of that meat because you have to trim
it off and you have to portion it. And then what
you're left with... You divide and that portion
is the cost of the meat, right? Very easy. With
French fries, for example, it starts getting
a little bit more tricky because you need to
calculate the tomatoes, but what you use to season
it, you use a rosemary salt. Okay, so now you
have to make a separate recipe for the rosemary
salt because you need to know how much the rosemary
salt costs. The rosemary salt maybe consists
of sea salt, rosemary, and like, let's say something
else, garlic powder, MSG, four things, right?
you need to make a recipe how much of those ingredients
go into a recipe of rosemary salt. And then that
recipe you need to divide by how many portions
it gives you. So let's say if I make 100 grams
of rosemary salt, I need to know how many servings
of fries I can season with this. Same for the
salad. What goes into the salad? You need to
break down all the ingredients. You need to break
down the wastage. Then you need to make a separate
recipe for the dressing. What goes into your
dressing? How many portions? What percentage
of that dressing goes into the salad? And so
not to go on and on about this, but like a simple
recipe for a restaurant is a lot of fucking work.
If you want to actually control the cost, you
want to actually know what's going on, at some
point you can like eyeball it. I don't recommend
it to anybody. If you actually want to know.
what it is that you're spending on food and what
it is that you need to charge. This is exactly
what you have to do. And this table does that
exactly for me. I can put in a recipe. I can
in a little window say, okay, this gives me this
amount of portions. It calculates straight away
what one portion of this would cost. So I can
take that and straight away input it into another
like full dish thing. But also it gives me a
certain percentage of usables, of miscellaneous
things. So things like, salt for seasoning pepper
for seasoning oil for like neutral oil for cooking
if you would add all those things into your recipe
making your work would be doubled so a lot of
times it's much easier to take a certain percentage
and add that onto your cost like two three percent
and in this you include exactly this they're
like little little knob of butter that you throw
in at the end to glaze your vegetables the you
know the squeeze of vinegar that you use to deglaze
the pan That's like incorporated in there. And
so this table does everything like that for me.
Yeah, like what I would do as well is adding
a 10 % of margin error. You know, just assuming
one of each 10, somebody will eat it, it will
be returned, it will be whatever. And at the
end of the day, you have that calculated, that
is something that can happen. You can also learn
on the go, like, which is your real... error
margin. But at the end of the day, it's better
to be safe than not. You know, like it's better
to be a little bit more expensive and have your
cost saved than just, you know, like trying to
play to have the most competitive price. And
at the same time, you know, like being losing
money because you're not calculating some things
that are also part of the business, you know.
Absolutely. Yeah, totally. I totally agree with
the margin of error. And it's really very beneficial
to do this because you fact check yourself basically,
right? Us as chefs and as professionals, we often
get caught up in sort of like thinking that we
know exactly what's going on. But it's very important
to fact check yourself because it's very easy
to be wrong. You might be starting to make a
dish and you're kind of like, oh, I love this.
This is great. And then you start putting it
together. And you start adding up all the cost
and you're like, hold on a second. For this salad,
I suddenly need to charge almost 30 euros or
$30 or whatever. And you're like, I can't do
that. Nobody's going to buy that. Unless you
market it in a good way, unless there's like
a premium ingredient that you want to put on
and then you can like sort of justify it. But
you're kind of like, oh shit, you know, like
what can I do to make this happen? Because you
can make a fucking amazing dish. If the salad
costs 40 quid, nobody's going to buy it. And
then it doesn't matter how good it was. Unless
you have a restaurant, the only restaurant in
an airport, people will buy it. That's very true.
And that is the, you know, exploitation that
people do at airports. Like water bottles for
like eight euros, you know? Yeah. 300 milliliters
of water bottles. Phil, did you know we've already
made nine episodes of The Line? Oh, really? People
sure love our crazy abuse stories working in
restaurants. Yes, they do. But now we're interested
in our listeners' stories. Oh, yay. I would love
to listen to more crazy stories about people
getting abused in restaurants. So, if anything
crazy ever happened to you working in professional
kitchens, if you want people to make fun of your
disgraces the same way we make fun of our disgraces,
Send us your stories from The Line and we'll
feature them on the show. DM us on Instagram.
Send it as a text or voice note. We'll share
our favorite ones in the next The Line episode.
So keep it short and sweet. Because trauma brings
people together. You were talking about recent
technology. So a few things about pricing. I
think as you're just saying. The price has to
be common sense. It doesn't matter what you calculate
and what was in your mind. If suddenly it's completely
out of the average in the market, you're doing
something wrong, even if it's too cheap or if
it's too expensive. You should check on that.
If it's too cheap, you're probably charging too
cheap, and you could add a little bit more price
to that. So this was one of the tech tools that
I liked the most in the last years. It's a Spanish
startup that is called Dynamite. And what they
did, this guy, he took technology that already
existed for airport flights pricing, like flight
pricing or hotel pricing. This is like an old
story that the same flight will be more expensive.
On high season and cheaper on low season. So
the prices are, you know, like the fluctuate
regarding the offer and demand, right? Same thing
in hotels. Well, this guy applied this to restaurants.
So he would like, you know, connect this software
to the booking system and to other systems. And
so basically the way it works is if the restaurant
is completely full, some prices get a little
bit down. And if it's go or the other way around,
exactly. Now, if it's completely empty, everything
gets cheaper. If it's completely full, everything
gets a little bit more expensive. And this would
make like, you know, like an increase at the
end of the month, just playing with that, you
know, like, and also that the systems that like
natural things, for example, you're at the pass
in a restaurant and you, you know, you, you communicate
with your head waiter and you say, I want to
get rid of. this ox cheeks, you know, like I
have two more portions, sell them. Like this
kind of dynamics, the chef could do it like directly
through the app and it would appear like first
thing on the screen when you open it. But yet
again, like, so this is not like for every concept.
I think having a digital menu on a fine dining
is lame, for example. But on a burger place,
it's perfectly fine. You know, like it depends
on. On what the concept it is. And yeah, I think
that's also like a handicap of many digital tools,
especially towards the guest. You know, you want
to feel the paper and some other things and you
don't want to be playing around with an app or
a tablet without interacting with other people.
Nobody ever would choose a cocktail vending for
a mixologist, you know, like a barman or bartender
catering you. Completely different experience,
completely different story, you know? Yeah, that's
super, super interesting. And it makes total
sense. And yeah, you know, without the sort of
app, the importance of front of house comes in,
you know, having a good front of house team is
a fucking, it's a golden goose. If you work with
professionals that you can have a symbiosis with.
as a chef it's it's fucking amazing you know
they get excited about specials that you do they
understand how to write the perfect check you
know how many restaurants have you worked in
where they talk about the perfect check you know
and everybody's striving obviously for the business
to have the perfect check it's like a nice full
check it's a good bill but also for the experience
of the customer you know um it's really good
and like with you know with this like costing
what you're saying sort of like when dishes are
too cheap you can charge a little bit more. And
that's an interesting point because the way that
I've learned it is that if you have a menu, right,
there's different categories of dishes on the
menu. There's a lot of people that are way more
into this than me, but it is like very... Even
if you're not trying to do it, it is kind of
what's happening. But if you're smart about it,
you can set your menu up. It's really, really
good for business. So there's some dishes that
have like a wow effect, but they don't give you
like a lot of revenue. They don't make a lot
of money, right? But there's other sort of like
carrier items that are very popular, but really
low cost that kind of like bump it up. And so
these items that are cheaper, but that you can
sell at a higher price, they enable you to put
things on the menu that maybe aren't really cost
effective, but they're interesting. they're exciting
right so for example say hey i want to make a
whole grill turbot in my restaurant and you get
you try to source a nice turbot you try to get
the right size and you're like fuck man if i
sell this turbot like i have to sell it for like
150 euros per portion otherwise i'm not going
to make any money on it you're sort of like okay
well what would people be okay to buy what can
i charge without making minus right and then
maybe you get sort of like okay i can i can sell
it for 110 you know still expensive but like
four or five people can share it and it's fine
and then maybe you entice the people to order
like a lot of sides with it and these sides they're
super cheap you have like a sweet potato dish
you have like you know a cool like grilled broccolini
dish or something like asparagus here there and
you can like upsell you know you have like truffle
fries that people could push with it And it,
like, balances it out. And people are going to
come. They're going to be like, oh, man, where
the fuck can you get a whole grilled turbot like
this unless you live in a Basque country? Not
that many places. And even there, not that many
places, right? But they're like, man, that was
fucking amazing. And because you kind of sold
this, like, big package, you had a wow factor,
but you equaled it out with all the other dishes,
they're going to leave feeling like they had
a very special experience, which they did, and
they're going to come back. And they're going
to bring, they're going to, you know, advertise
your place to other people, and that's how your
business grows. So I found it. This is from a
website. So it's a menu engineering idea, concept.
There's this matrix where you have, you balance
dishes that are more popular or high in popularity
or in profitability. So there are four animals.
You have dogs are low profit and low popularity.
Then you have puzzles. They're high profit, low
popularity. Plow horses, low profit, high popularity,
and stars, high profit, high popularity. I think
you should balance. You can always have some
of each. For example, if you have a dish where
the profit is very low, but it's super popular
and people go for that reason, you should keep
the price that way. You should make it more expensive
because, as you say, it can work as the reason
people go there. And it's like a marketing thing
incorporated into your offer. I can always think
about Crema Catalana. You know what? I remember
Crema Catalana is so ridiculously cheap to produce.
It's basically, you're selling milk, you know,
like milk with sugar and some flour. And it probably
costs like 20 euro cents the portion, and you
will sell it by 250, you know, and it's like
a decent or more, you know, like. What about
the buying? How do you handle buying? Well, I
mean, that kind of depends where you are, I think.
I mean, whenever I was in a kitchen, depending
on where I was in the world, I have to adapt
to the local market, right? There are some places
where certain things are much cheaper and certain
things are much more expensive. You need to know
the market, right, of where you are. So it's
very, very viable to be sort of like, okay, if
I buy these potatoes at this price and I want
to make, let's just go with the example of French
fries. I want to make French fries. I have to
charge this much. Well, how much do French fries
over there cost? And over there and over there
and over there. And why, you know, how much volume
do they do to justify that price or like whatever?
And where can I position myself? Do I position
myself in value? Do I position myself in quality?
Right. So I've always been a very, very, or privileged
team of we've got to choose quality and we'll
charge a little bit more rather than do cheaper
and do more, you know. You cannot skimp on ingredients.
I think buying the ingredients is probably the
most important thing in what makes your dish
good or not, in my opinion. You know, there's
many examples that I could name. You know, you
can like twist around and this and that and blah,
but I think 90 % of the time, And as we're talking
about some really niche cooking places that can,
for example, the Mugaritz, you know, like I heard
when I was in Mugaritz, people were saying stuff
like the ingredients of the quality of the ingredients
doesn't really matter that much for what we do.
It makes sense for what they do, because they're
not offering flavor, for example. Not necessarily,
yeah. I'm pretty sure they have some dope product
at some point across the menu that you have something
that is... absolutely unique in the world and
top quality and top price as well. But yeah,
I understand that they use like, you know, normal
vegetables for whatever, you know, like. If you've
experienced, you know, cooking where the ingredient
is at the number one place and, you know, food
produced by somebody who understands that and
gets the essence of things out, it's... It's
amazing. It's like transcendent, you know, and
there's not a lot of places where you can experience
this. But for me personally, as a chef, that
is what, you know, people should strive for.
I think the ingredient should be a number one.
And, you know, there's so much like talking about
costing and all that sort of stuff. There's this
like ego aspect, right? As a chef, you make something
that you like and then you make it and you check
it, right? How do you check it? You cost it.
Does it work in a business sense? You know, you'd
be surprised not a lot of chefs are able to do
that. Fair enough. Nobody really shows you as
a chef. You kind of have to figure it out. You
have to have a great mentor. Well, today I think
you can use ChatGPT for it. It won't give you
precise things, but if you give them the inputs
of the price you paid for the ingredients, it
can get very close, close enough to be a valid.
It's not eyeballing. It's a little bit better
than that. So it's something, but you should
always be skeptic for whatever an AI tool does.
Absolutely, yeah. But so like you say, you make
a dish, you cost it out, you're kind of like,
fuck, I have to charge way too much. I can't
really justify this. It's kind of like, well,
what do you have to do? Can you scale it somehow?
Can you change it? Can you do a little bit of
this? Can you compromise somewhere so that it
does work? And then the second thing is kind
of like fact -checking it against the customer.
Because you might really like something, but
does your audience like it? And that, at the
end of the day, is the most important thing,
right? And I feel like a lot of people, they
don't do this. Chefs are often so ego -driven.
They make this thing and they're like, oh, it's
so interesting. It's so this, it's so that. This
technique, this like fucking little thing is
so cool. And then like nobody orders it, nobody
likes it. And it's really, it's a very good exercise
as a chef to make things. The way that I do it,
I serve things as a special, right? I put it
on as a special. I tell front of house about
it. I do a tasting with them. I tell them the
details about it. They taste it. Hopefully they
like it. They get excited about it. People are
simple, you know, you give them something to
taste, they get excited about it, you know, like
more likely to sell more of it, right? So if
you want to sell something, give them a taste
and they're like, yum, yum, yum, so tasty. Exactly.
And that taste isn't the 10 % you calculated,
so it's already part of it. And then run it as
a special and then tell front of house, so, hey,
please, I need feedback on the dishes. So when
somebody orders the special, do get some feedback
on it. And if the feedback's not good, let it
go or work on it, you know, because that's the
whole point, right? The whole point is like to
give it to people, not for you to sit there and
eat it yourself. I'm so surprised on how many
people struggle with this. Kind of like, I really
want to, I'm hanging on to it so much. It's like,
no, people don't like it. People don't want it.
Let it go, man. Or find a different approach.
Find a different combination, a different plating.
Maybe instead of having it as a big main course,
make it a little snack. You know, like, oh, you
wanted to serve sweetbreads as a main course
and nobody's ordering it? Well, I don't know,
you know. Obviously, a big part of our function
as professionals is to educate people gently,
right? Not everybody's going to order awful if
they've not grown up with it, right? We can gently
bring it to their attention and be sort of like,
hey, maybe try this, you know? Give it a try.
Hey, you know what? I'll bring you a small portion.
You can try it. Maybe next time you want to order
it, right? And that's how you educate people
in a kind way, not in an entitled way. But, you
know, maybe they didn't want to eat a main course
of sweetbreads. Make it a snack. Make it a small
bite. Grill it. Put it on a toast. I don't know.
Put it into a framework where it's more digestible
to people. I think I've told this story before
of my friend, Raul Roman, who is a chef in Paris.
He was working in his own restaurant that made
it to the Michelin Guide at some point, and he
served anticuchos, you know? Yes. And somebody
called him and said, like, wow, this is so nice.
It's really tasty. I've never had this before.
And he said, because I made it with the heart.
That's really funny. But he didn't say what it
was, you know? Like, this is something I've seen.
Millions of times in culinary schools projects
where they serve cow's heart because they think
it's so crazy and creative and modern and different,
and they find out that nobody likes it. Nobody
will order it. It's like a very niche thing,
and you can't put that on a menu just like that.
You really have to know what you're doing. in
order for something like that to be sold. You
have to be like St. John, you know, like a no
-fault restaurant or having a no -fault event
or something like that where people go for that,
you know, people who like that kind of stuff.
Yeah, the way that you market things and that
you brand things is so extremely important. You
know, the same thing, like, can be rejected,
but you give it a different coat of paint. And
if you know how to do that really well and you
know how to navigate your concept and your style,
it's a very, very good skill to have.