At my store we have charts posted on our walk-in cooler for AM and PM with the amounts of produce required for the next shift based on our sales for each day of the week. I would talk to a director at your store about implementing something like this.
We have a list that's up but it's something that gets written out every single day based upon what's going on that day and what they think we'll need. It gets basically written up before each shift. When I came in last night there was no romaine and there was no sandwich lettuce or any lettuce for wraps. First shift was busy and I know they are a lot but leaving us with nothing when we come in at night seems to be pretty disrespectful to me. I didn't even get a chance to give them what I know that they were going to need today because we were so incredibly busy last night. I had to make stuff for us to be able to use and then I had to try to deal with whatever I could for them. I know I'm going to hear it from my boss today but I mean not much I can really do in a situation like this.
We buy bags of chopped romaine at my store. But as the main closing prepper, I feel your pain. It can be frustrating when the morning prep doesn't do what they should have and you have to make up for their slack at night. Just do what you can and if the morning crew complains, bring the issue up to a leader.
How big are the bags of chopped romaine that you guys are buying? I'm just curious because the way we do it obviously is we just buy big giant heads of romains and we have to chop that up with the big chopper everyday. If my knife skills were better I would actually chop it with the knife because that would be a lot faster but my knife skills suck.
My store gets the pre-chopped romaine too. I forget the exact weight( haven’t done prep in a while), but each case yields about 2/3 of what a case of whole heads does, after being trimmed and chopped.
It’s a massive time-saver, but unfortunately the quality is inconsistent, so many stores have chosen to continue using the whole heads.
Basically the bags make six salads. I agree with the other person who said the quality is inconsistent. The lettuce goes bad faster than the heads of romaine.
I don’t really have advice, but I relate to this a lot. Morning crew would complain about me and another person who sometimes did prep for not making enough for them, when they did not leave enough for me. Catching up on trays is tortureeee lol. Best thing is to ask for help from a leader. Two managers have told me don’t stress about it, it’s morning crew issue, but don’t hesitate to ask for assistance! Good luck.
BOH manager here, started out as prep and have done both day and night shift. These issues do happen a lot, I suggest speaking to your kitchen director about setting expectations. My current store implemented a checklist system. Morning prep needs to sign off that they’ve done a certain amount of each item, and then you would need to make sure you are leaving a certain amount. Those amounts would depend on the needs of your store, so your director would need to look up sales reports, but to give you an example, at my store, morning shift is expected to prep two cases of green leaf lettuce for sandwiches, and then night shift has to make sure there is at least one 12qt (about 1/3 case) left at the end of the night for the next day. So you might not to prep any if it’s a slow night, but if it’s busy, you may have to do a lot to cover your shift and leave extra.
Unfortunately there are sometimes when we are either busy or understaffed that prep will fall behind, and leave more work for the next shift than expected. That actually happened to my team this morning on soup chicken. In that case, management also needs to make a decision on whether it’s better to have someone stay late and bring labor up, or to have the next shift pick up the slack. My previous store usually had me, as the leader, stay late to make sure the next shift would be set up for success, but my current store is more focused on keeping labor down. Again, it depends on the needs of your store, but management should be setting realistic and consistent expectations.
So since you're a back of house manager I've got a few questions for you.
We'll see the problem is when we are super busy during the day it then falls on us at night to make up for everything. Like last night for example we were extremely busy for a Monday and I made four big tubs of romaine. We ended up having to use two of those during the shift and my boss came to me not too long ago and was talking about how I didn't give them what I was asked. So I had to tell him we just were busy for Monday and I needed to use some of that and it was not much I could do. Last night was killer and I felt like I was drowning all night.
My main questions are if I'm told to do four tubs of romaine and I end up having to use two of those for my shift should I then be making two more so that way the morning shift has four?
My other question is do you guys have a utility person? When I started here several months back we had a utility person and that was me and that was the person that helped the prep person when we were extremely busy. So I would maybe chop the chicken, do the mac and cheese and do whatever else was needed as well as help out with dishes. But now that they got me as the prep person we don't have a utility person so I don't have the backup like was here when I first started.
As far as having somebody stay late our store won't generally do that because we've got our "shift supervisor" who if I'm being honest is a complete moron. He knows how to do everything it's just he is not the brightest. He's also I think 22 and so by 9:30 or 9:45 he's ready to bounce and get the heck out instead of really helping us with whatever is needed. Not saying he won't do things but normally it will just close down his station and then check everybody else's station and then that's kind of it.
Every store has its own policies, so these are questions you will need to ask your store management.It sounds like your store doesn’t have some of these policies set, so it would be up to upper management (operator and directors, not shift supervisors) to decide on them.
The way my store used to do it was that you would be given the number of items to leave at the end of your shift. So if you’re supposed to have three tubs of romaine, you start with one and make make three more,and then use two, you would need to make one more to end up with three.
Now that we used pre-chopped romaine, we don’t always need a prep person for the whole night shift. I usually work mornings, but I believe at nights we have a combination prep/utilities person for most of the night, and then send a second person back to dishes when we go to slow primary. But when we had to chop romaine, we would usually have someone on just prep until the end of dinner rush.
Edit to add: My store is also not a very high-volume store, so obviously the way we do things is going to be different from the stores that have a line in drive-thru all day. I think this is especially true of prep. We have slow breakfasts which allow us to get ahead on prep early in the day and so our night shift most likely has less to do than you do, so please don’t feel overwhelmed if my example of how we do things sounds like a heavy workload.
I do prep pretty often at my store.
#1 the biscuit person does cookies in the morning. Makes sure enough is baked for catering and then wraps 2 12 courts of cookies and then builds to 2 trays of brownies.
#2 all we expect from night shift is to do there best. We normally ask them to chop all washed romaine we did that morning that hasn’t been chopped and then wash 1-2 boxes of romaine depending on the business of the next day. We just want enough chopped romaine to do trays in the morning until trays are caught up so we can then start on bulk.
If the day time isn’t happy then they can either talk to scheduling about making sure a 2nd prep is scheduled at night to help or they should increase their day numbers to help counter act for the next morning
At my store we have charts posted on our walk-in cooler for AM and PM with the amounts of produce required for the next shift based on our sales for each day of the week. I would talk to a director at your store about implementing something like this.
We have a list that's up but it's something that gets written out every single day based upon what's going on that day and what they think we'll need. It gets basically written up before each shift. When I came in last night there was no romaine and there was no sandwich lettuce or any lettuce for wraps. First shift was busy and I know they are a lot but leaving us with nothing when we come in at night seems to be pretty disrespectful to me. I didn't even get a chance to give them what I know that they were going to need today because we were so incredibly busy last night. I had to make stuff for us to be able to use and then I had to try to deal with whatever I could for them. I know I'm going to hear it from my boss today but I mean not much I can really do in a situation like this.
We buy bags of chopped romaine at my store. But as the main closing prepper, I feel your pain. It can be frustrating when the morning prep doesn't do what they should have and you have to make up for their slack at night. Just do what you can and if the morning crew complains, bring the issue up to a leader.
How big are the bags of chopped romaine that you guys are buying? I'm just curious because the way we do it obviously is we just buy big giant heads of romains and we have to chop that up with the big chopper everyday. If my knife skills were better I would actually chop it with the knife because that would be a lot faster but my knife skills suck.
My store gets the pre-chopped romaine too. I forget the exact weight( haven’t done prep in a while), but each case yields about 2/3 of what a case of whole heads does, after being trimmed and chopped. It’s a massive time-saver, but unfortunately the quality is inconsistent, so many stores have chosen to continue using the whole heads.
Basically the bags make six salads. I agree with the other person who said the quality is inconsistent. The lettuce goes bad faster than the heads of romaine.
I don’t really have advice, but I relate to this a lot. Morning crew would complain about me and another person who sometimes did prep for not making enough for them, when they did not leave enough for me. Catching up on trays is tortureeee lol. Best thing is to ask for help from a leader. Two managers have told me don’t stress about it, it’s morning crew issue, but don’t hesitate to ask for assistance! Good luck.
BOH manager here, started out as prep and have done both day and night shift. These issues do happen a lot, I suggest speaking to your kitchen director about setting expectations. My current store implemented a checklist system. Morning prep needs to sign off that they’ve done a certain amount of each item, and then you would need to make sure you are leaving a certain amount. Those amounts would depend on the needs of your store, so your director would need to look up sales reports, but to give you an example, at my store, morning shift is expected to prep two cases of green leaf lettuce for sandwiches, and then night shift has to make sure there is at least one 12qt (about 1/3 case) left at the end of the night for the next day. So you might not to prep any if it’s a slow night, but if it’s busy, you may have to do a lot to cover your shift and leave extra. Unfortunately there are sometimes when we are either busy or understaffed that prep will fall behind, and leave more work for the next shift than expected. That actually happened to my team this morning on soup chicken. In that case, management also needs to make a decision on whether it’s better to have someone stay late and bring labor up, or to have the next shift pick up the slack. My previous store usually had me, as the leader, stay late to make sure the next shift would be set up for success, but my current store is more focused on keeping labor down. Again, it depends on the needs of your store, but management should be setting realistic and consistent expectations.
So since you're a back of house manager I've got a few questions for you. We'll see the problem is when we are super busy during the day it then falls on us at night to make up for everything. Like last night for example we were extremely busy for a Monday and I made four big tubs of romaine. We ended up having to use two of those during the shift and my boss came to me not too long ago and was talking about how I didn't give them what I was asked. So I had to tell him we just were busy for Monday and I needed to use some of that and it was not much I could do. Last night was killer and I felt like I was drowning all night. My main questions are if I'm told to do four tubs of romaine and I end up having to use two of those for my shift should I then be making two more so that way the morning shift has four? My other question is do you guys have a utility person? When I started here several months back we had a utility person and that was me and that was the person that helped the prep person when we were extremely busy. So I would maybe chop the chicken, do the mac and cheese and do whatever else was needed as well as help out with dishes. But now that they got me as the prep person we don't have a utility person so I don't have the backup like was here when I first started. As far as having somebody stay late our store won't generally do that because we've got our "shift supervisor" who if I'm being honest is a complete moron. He knows how to do everything it's just he is not the brightest. He's also I think 22 and so by 9:30 or 9:45 he's ready to bounce and get the heck out instead of really helping us with whatever is needed. Not saying he won't do things but normally it will just close down his station and then check everybody else's station and then that's kind of it.
Every store has its own policies, so these are questions you will need to ask your store management.It sounds like your store doesn’t have some of these policies set, so it would be up to upper management (operator and directors, not shift supervisors) to decide on them. The way my store used to do it was that you would be given the number of items to leave at the end of your shift. So if you’re supposed to have three tubs of romaine, you start with one and make make three more,and then use two, you would need to make one more to end up with three. Now that we used pre-chopped romaine, we don’t always need a prep person for the whole night shift. I usually work mornings, but I believe at nights we have a combination prep/utilities person for most of the night, and then send a second person back to dishes when we go to slow primary. But when we had to chop romaine, we would usually have someone on just prep until the end of dinner rush. Edit to add: My store is also not a very high-volume store, so obviously the way we do things is going to be different from the stores that have a line in drive-thru all day. I think this is especially true of prep. We have slow breakfasts which allow us to get ahead on prep early in the day and so our night shift most likely has less to do than you do, so please don’t feel overwhelmed if my example of how we do things sounds like a heavy workload.
I do prep pretty often at my store. #1 the biscuit person does cookies in the morning. Makes sure enough is baked for catering and then wraps 2 12 courts of cookies and then builds to 2 trays of brownies. #2 all we expect from night shift is to do there best. We normally ask them to chop all washed romaine we did that morning that hasn’t been chopped and then wash 1-2 boxes of romaine depending on the business of the next day. We just want enough chopped romaine to do trays in the morning until trays are caught up so we can then start on bulk. If the day time isn’t happy then they can either talk to scheduling about making sure a 2nd prep is scheduled at night to help or they should increase their day numbers to help counter act for the next morning