I stayed after my crew left, they were nearly dead and so was i. I stayed 8 hours cleaning up and prepping for the next day as a valentines gift to everyone. How did yours turn out
It sucked donkey balls but we survived. The weather has been terrible lately, killing business for a couple weeks, so we needed the volume. Now it's smooth sailing...until Easter. And Mother's Day...
I will admit i was tempted to put a fake ring in something and see how it unrolled. Another long sunday ahead, dear god please do not break any fryers grills or broilers, amen
I hope everyone made it out alive. It was a busy weekend but a succesful one. No one quit, nothing broke and not alot of complaints. I'm blessed with a great staff. Until Easter...take care chefs.
My Sous called in sick in the morning, meaning I had to come in and do brunch short staffed. We basically got killed, super swamped all morning. It went out okay but only because I was running 125% capacity for three straight hours. Then I had to flip things over to get ready for the 'main event", the actual VD night service. Plus I had sat down with the owner a month ago and agreed that the VD menu would run just VD night but at the last minute he wanted to run it all weekend. Of course this is after I've got my last possible truck for the week and some of the stuff required ingredients you can't source here at all (eg MG stuff).. Again, it was transparent on the customer side, they have no idea how much work it takes to pump that stuff out.
It shouldn't be that much work but we're a medium/bigger-city-type place in a little one-horse town. There's no labor pool of skilled culinary workers to hire from. Everything has to be taught as you'd teach a child. No one knows how to blanch things, crack eggs, make any mother sauce, etc. No one I have been able to hire can cook steaks to temp or cook fish. No one understands how to cook pasta to al dente or why you have to do it. My Sous commutes from the same town I moved from.
The bright spot is a couple of younger guys. One is a senior in HS and the other is 19. They are at least high energy and motivated, and at least one of them is planning to go on to culinary school. So at least I don't feel like the water is just running off of the hard clay before it can soak in.
I understand your struggle with employees, tskes months for me to hire anyone, and they will barely have any idea what they're doing, but I hire the ones who can learn and can be motivated to take pride in what they do. Still gotta house train them though
The upside is that since the place is about 105 sets I can do a lot of the cooking myself. Between my Sous and I we do the stuff that takes some skill (for the most part). Slowly I'm trying to teach some of this stuff to cooks with varying degrees of success.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Chef Forum
559.8K posts
89.3K members
Since 1999
A forum community dedicated to Professional Chefs. Come join the discussion about recipes, prep, kitchens, styles, tips, tricks, reviews, accessories, schools, and more!