Hiring Help in the Kitchen
You will undoubtedly have the frustrating experience of watching someone you’ve hired work very slowly. I’ve sometimes thought I could do twice as much as the people I’ve hired if only I didn’t have to supervise! But. in fact, much of preparation simply takes a certain number of hours to do, and even reducing a task to the fewest possible motions can only reduce the time it takes by a limited amount.
I found that the best way to encourage people who worked for me to be productive was to:
- set up the job they will be doing in their own cleared spot in the kitchen, and put all the ingredients and equipment they will need together so they don’t have to wander around looking for the peeler or the sieve.
- have two people work together as a team on the more laborious and unpleasant jobs such as deboning chickens or shelling and deveining prawns.
- change the type of job often enough so that they don’t get bogged down in the boredom of monotonous work. People have different preferences about which job they would like to do, so I would usually explain what needed to do and ask which they would prefer.
- have a formal break for lunch where everyone gets out of the kitchen and eats something other than what they are preparing. It refreshed us and was a good time to assess progress and to assign what still needed to be done.
- get them to think about better ways to do something. Those who worked for me often had excellent suggestions.
An advantage of hiring others to help is that one person can be given the job of clearing and washing whenever and wherever it is necessary – and it left me to concentrate on the cooking (and supervising).
Hiring others also seemed to reduce the pressure I felt, probably because everything was done with plenty of time to spare. So, don’t wait and get help!
Catering Staff Management
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