Well.
I'm not really sure what to say here. You seem to be looking for some "forumula" that will make you understand this business, and make the lights come on. I don't know of any. Not to sound cliche'd, but experience is the best teacher.
And if you've headed this thing actively for a year, I'd think you'd have worked a hell of a lot of bugs out by now.
Software and such doesn't run the business, it just reduces some of the time consuming tasks.
I was 6 years as a high-end banquet Sous Chef. You're right, its way different than restaurants.
It's much more similar to event catering, which I did previous to that, and concurrently as well.
In the banquet room, I created menus, shopped, ordered, prepped/cooked, serve etc. We accomadated from 30 to 80 people in a serving, plating and serving "live", from 4 to 7 courses. We always offered at least 2 Main dishes, usually poultry and beef or pork or lamb, etc.
Lets take your 1st two requests:
Food equations per person.
Costing dishes.
I can see two reasons you are asking about these.
One, you feel you need these formulas to do the job right. Perhaps you're experiencing shortages, or overages. Or maybe you're constantly confused, and are looking for clarification.
The second reason would be that whoever you're working FOR, i.e., owner of the facility, wants to see your "numbers". Or perhaps you're on a limited cost budget.
Personally, I used equations and cost formulas only for a short time. Once you learn what you're doing, the time spent on all that, was better spent on the creative side, like creating new plates, sides, improving presentation etc.
The exception was doing an initial analysis of a new offering and presenting it to the owner for approval. Which was never a problem. Just a breakdown of the final cost of a dish, to confirm profit feasibility. Which is always pretty good anyway in a high end banquet room. But this was not an ongoing process- once done, if Boss wanted to check "numbers" I had only to do a quick calculation or two.
Your last one, timing:
Since everything varies- what you're serving, what I was serving, there's no magic formula here. My boss was exceptionally good at timing even a seven course service. It boils down to experience, and the ability to keep 1.3 kazillion things in your head at once. The more you do it, especially with any given item over and over, the more precise you get at it. Once you develop that clock in your head, it gets easier. And more fun. But there ARE general guidelines that keep you out of trouble.
First and foremost would be Mise En Place! The more "ready to go" you are, the smoother it goes, and the easier it is to handle unexpected problems. This applies not only to prep and cooking but very much to service--plating and expediting.
Another thing is just competent help. Ive seen inexperienced people thrown on the plating line or even to the pass
and boy did they screw things up quick! Which means, you put people at stations they're good at, not on the pass cuz they're tired of loading ovens. In this regard, getting the food out, it happens to be similar to short order cooking. The timing of both
cooking and service is a matter of practice and experience.
Thats all I can think of to tell you without more specific questions to answer.
