đ« oh yea this is the way. I usually get in at 4am. My other line cook comes in at 5am and it's just us till 9am cause it too much trouble for anyone else to wake up that early. We close at 2pm....
For me not the whole service but generally for my first couple hours I cover about half the line plus I'm in charge of deserts. So I love when it's slow between lunch and dinner.
When you only have one table and can actually cook the food to perfection and plate it nice and then it sits in the window because FOH went for thier 19th smokebreak of the morning. Chefs kiss
You generally don't need someone on every station unless it's busy enough. A lot of places won't have one person on every station at all except for maybe Friday and Saturday night.
Where I work now Fry station is the most fucked station currently. We only have 4 baskets so it gets hairy trying to drop everything in a reasonable amount of time during the big rushes. Heâll have like 8 chicken cutlets fired. Our 2 fried apps. Fries. Fish which gets battered to order. Like thereâs literally just only so much space.
Fry is one of those stations where it is tempting to dump the new guy but anyone who has seen a fry cook who knows what they're doing at work knows it makes a big difference.
Dude! So many times Iâll have two chicken tenderloin below the basket, tenders in the basket. Fries in another fryer, and several battered fish in the last one. Stuff gets WILD. I had 6 baskets, all being used, and the servers call out they need more chips. I kinda miss the fry station.
My last BOH job fry was divided into three stations. While it was slow I'd work all three. But not every fry position is equal. Fry at those restaurants was a monster.
Hahaha Friday night in the Midwest in the back of a bowling alley will change your life. Especially when you gotta turn two out of three vats into fish only vats
Yeah for sure, some stations are set up as two in one stations like pizza/fry or apps/desserts so I'd say that's pretty accurate that we work more than one station at a time.
Depends on, for me, who your working with for the night / day. Some people can handle their one station and some people, I have to hop back and forth to help.
Friday and Saturdays are usually fully staffed and sometimes overstaffed over a holiday. The rest of the week is usually some sort of skeleton crew depending on projections that week. 1 guy can run 2 or 3 stations sometimes 4 stations but you can only hope he's got a fat deal with mgmt to replace that many people single handily day in and day out.
If you can handle your station easily in a rush then start multitasking and helping a colleague with their station. Stay out of the way, communicate well, and lend a hand
I work 6 days a week, 3 of those days I work the kitchen alone. So I've got 3 separate stations to take care of ontop of prep, dishes, and receiving and putting away orders.
I've had says where it takes me 3 hours to finish a simple prep item because orders roll in everytime I get back to my prep station.
This industry is in for a reckoning soon.
Depends on the place, cook times, style of food and other logistics.
My first line I worked an entire 50+ item menu with 200 seats alone, or with one other cook. There were 4 "stations" but we did not need a whole person for each station. The food was easy and our Chef had streamlined every process possible to lower workload and service times. For mother's Day and other crazy events we would run three cooks and a dishie.
I also worked a breakfast grill for a few years with just 20 items and only 40 seats. There were three of us cooking pretty much constantly, one at each possible station.
The problem with seeming like that, is if the kitchen manager sees it's "not so bad" they'll send someone home. Gotta keep a chill day slightly out of the "not so bad" range to cut labor costs.
In a perfect world, no. Each cook works their station and coordinates with the others for pick up times so all the food gets up at the same time. However, when your grill cook calls out 15min after he was supposed to be there, hot apps is on their second day and has no idea whats happening, and the saute cook is still hung over... You gotta do what you gotta do...
When I was at Dennys you were alone 5/6 shifts. Only shift you had help was Sunday morning and it was literally just pancakes. So yes, in my experience Iâve almost always ran multiple if not all stations
When I was at Dennyâs I could run the kitchen alone for the whole day. But not on the weekends.
Granted we were the busiest Dennyâs in the country (Canada.) constantly top of sales. Weâd be doing about 500 covers during the week, 1500 on weekends. Thatâs just the morning shift.
I attribute my very quick pace on the line to my time at Dennyâs, everywhere Iâve been since people ask me how Iâm so fast. Because I had to be.
Yep, this exactly, and I used to do the weekends for a year straight. They had me trapped with guilt because it took me two years to replace one cook.
Yeah itâs bad when the $13-14 an hour cook(Florida) can out pace chefs
I prepped the entremetier until the late shift take over. Then I was left with an empty garde and had to restock that as well. There's 10 of us total but shifts are staggered so the only time we're full-staffed is service time. It's fun dedicating half of your station just to stock then a bunch of orders come in.
It was sarcasm, I hate it.
All depends on experience, if they can manage that much, how busy it is. It helps while prepping to see where each station puts things especially if you have to jump and help, keeps the flow of food much faster with not much communication.
Depends, my last place was a hotel restaurant backed by Aspen Ski Co so they had people staffed up and ready to go. My current spot is a mom and pop so we have Chez and Dumbo working their first cook jobs.
In my experience, yes. For the first couple hours I cover the whole line while the others prep and then when it gets busy I get some help, but I'm still covering at least two stations.
I work 5 nights a week. Wednesday and Thursday, I run the line alone. On the weekends, the AM will come help if i need it, but otherwise I run the line alone so she can run the rest of the store.
I have three stations on my line, for the AM two people run it unless it's a holiday like mother's day. For dinner I have anywhere from 3-6 people on. Later on unless again it's a holiday or special event I'm usually down to 1 cook by 11pm.
That's what drove me out of the kitchen and into the front of house. I was "trained" on 2 stations at once with 0 line experience and expected to open, run, and prep for both and be out at some exact time. It also drove out the next 3 people who they tried to do the same to. But as other commenter's said, yeah it's probably just trying to staff bare bones for strict labor hours.
I do a "raw bar" with that side of the station also dedicated to desserts. I also work another station dedicated to salads. Some busier days we will have one salad person and one for the rest. But I can run that station as a whole when it's relatively slow.
In my experience, usually it's the dishie. Once you get 'caught up' (if ever), you get passed around. Prep, backup, line, buss, sometimes register, maybe relieve someone from drive through, basically anywhere that needs help or an extra person. Usually it's just best to do the last 10 dishes real slow because you usually get borrowed for too long and come back to a shit show.
When I worked the line in 2021 I only worked more than one station when someone was on break during slow time. Occasionally weâd get a small rush where Iâd be tossing steaks, dropping onion rings, and firing burgers, but it wasnât ever unmanageable. Then again, I was schedule part time for peak hours
I'm the pastry chef. This Saturday I worked dish, garde manger *and* still baked off a couple things. This was after I had worked my pastry shift already.
This is the way. đ„Č
Maybe I'm weird, but *the kitchen* is your station. And good managers will put as many hands there as experience and volume dictate.
Just because there is a grill and a fryer on one line doesn't mean you need a grill bitch and a fry guy.
The better you are, the more things you can multitask the higher your value. Use that as leverage and don't let your manager take advantage of you.
Most kitchens that aren't fine dining expect you to be all over the place, from my experience at least. The lower a price point usually means the less well staffed a place is, unless you've got a manager who knows what theyre doing, but.....
A lot of places would pay you less if they could, instead they use the industry standard pay, because they know they wouldn't be able to hold onto anyone otherwise. Then they take your wages and deduct them from their overhead, they have a number they're willing to spend on you, and even if an extra hand would mean better food getting out and less stress on the peoole who essentially keep them afloat, if it would cost more than that number, they won't add staff.
I've worked places that I ran the whole line solo or with 1 other guy, and I've worked places that have 1 or even 2 people per station or a couple floaters to help some people that are drowning. They both have their ups & downs, but being overstaffed always beats understaffed.
So on my line, there are 4 stations. Expo/plate, grill, saute, and fry. With the exception of myself and the kitchen manager, all our other cooks and dish guys are under 18 years old. For whatever reason, the chef has seen fit to send half the minors on break at 4, and the other half at 7. So most weekends, there is at least an hour where the KM is doing prep, and I do the line. It's possible, but it's also not ideal, and slow. I mean, I'm running in circles like a fucking maniac, but food doesn't come out as fast as it could.
I work at a steakhouse. Its a 2 man kitchen. I balance running the fryer, a flat top and veggie pot. And the oven for things like mac and cheese and potatoes. Then making pastas. It kinda sucks because when we get busy I simply cannot produce the quality of food that I would like to. I feel like if I were to move to a restaurant where I would be at one station it would be easier but idk.
Good way to get experience, opening for a small restaurant. You'll have to learn to work every station and time things so everything is hot in the window at the same time.
Yea Iâm a chef at a fine dining restaurant and I have one person at the very least on a station. Itâs part of the daily budget. If you canât afford enough people to run a line without you working it physically then reduce the size of the menu and focus on making that food the best it could be to build sales
You're assuming a kitchen is running fully staffed. I haven't experienced that since 2021.
You got some good experiences then mate. Fully staffed was always a dream that management felt wasn't necessarily worth efforts ;)
"Sure sex is great, but have you ever been fully staffed?"
đ€Ł yep! Yesterday! đ©
We have one per station during our busy dinner rushes and then I start cutting after thatâs over and itâs me the rest of the night
For real
This 100%
Fucking lol the truth right here.
I have never experienced a fully staffed kitchen
I generally work the line solo for a few hours everyday, especially when thereâs a ton of prep to do.
đ« oh yea this is the way. I usually get in at 4am. My other line cook comes in at 5am and it's just us till 9am cause it too much trouble for anyone else to wake up that early. We close at 2pm....
For me not the whole service but generally for my first couple hours I cover about half the line plus I'm in charge of deserts. So I love when it's slow between lunch and dinner.
I love/hate cooking for like a single 5 top by myself in a massive kitchen at 2pm. Sometimes it just makes you feel badass idk
When you only have one table and can actually cook the food to perfection and plate it nice and then it sits in the window because FOH went for thier 19th smokebreak of the morning. Chefs kiss
Then they come back and said they put in the wrong order and you have to make a rush on the order
I need 7 chicken piccata on the fly.
Sorry we are out
We just ran out of piccata. We only have chicken
We just ran out of both so now your eating dust itâs a premium feature
We're out of dust, but take a look at the batwing bitch!
Lmao or they put a order for a special that was out like 2 days ago
Actually we have one but itâs $70 for a staff price
And even though there is only one table sat the food you just made didn't make it there.Â
Yep lol usually happens the worst is on a busy day and FOH is going nuts
I hate when they try to shorten the menu words and you try to figure out what the hell they put
You generally don't need someone on every station unless it's busy enough. A lot of places won't have one person on every station at all except for maybe Friday and Saturday night.
I donât know of any non fast food places which have someone whoâs only job is to âdip food in fryersâ
Where I work now Fry station is the most fucked station currently. We only have 4 baskets so it gets hairy trying to drop everything in a reasonable amount of time during the big rushes. Heâll have like 8 chicken cutlets fired. Our 2 fried apps. Fries. Fish which gets battered to order. Like thereâs literally just only so much space.
Fry is one of those stations where it is tempting to dump the new guy but anyone who has seen a fry cook who knows what they're doing at work knows it makes a big difference.
Dude! So many times Iâll have two chicken tenderloin below the basket, tenders in the basket. Fries in another fryer, and several battered fish in the last one. Stuff gets WILD. I had 6 baskets, all being used, and the servers call out they need more chips. I kinda miss the fry station.
His name was Jencer, would come in 5-9 and do exactly that, what a soldierâŠ
My last BOH job fry was divided into three stations. While it was slow I'd work all three. But not every fry position is equal. Fry at those restaurants was a monster.
Hahaha Friday night in the Midwest in the back of a bowling alley will change your life. Especially when you gotta turn two out of three vats into fish only vats
Talk to my 60 year old fry guy who refuses to learn another station or even do prep, the manâs been w us for 7 years/
Yes. Yes they do.
I'm now picturing a grown up Ferb with tats and a badly stained apron.
Yeah for sure, some stations are set up as two in one stations like pizza/fry or apps/desserts so I'd say that's pretty accurate that we work more than one station at a time.
Depends on, for me, who your working with for the night / day. Some people can handle their one station and some people, I have to hop back and forth to help.
I have NEVER NOT worked multiple stations in any kitchens since 1977
Friday and Saturdays are usually fully staffed and sometimes overstaffed over a holiday. The rest of the week is usually some sort of skeleton crew depending on projections that week. 1 guy can run 2 or 3 stations sometimes 4 stations but you can only hope he's got a fat deal with mgmt to replace that many people single handily day in and day out.
If you can handle your station easily in a rush then start multitasking and helping a colleague with their station. Stay out of the way, communicate well, and lend a hand
I work 6 days a week, 3 of those days I work the kitchen alone. So I've got 3 separate stations to take care of ontop of prep, dishes, and receiving and putting away orders. I've had says where it takes me 3 hours to finish a simple prep item because orders roll in everytime I get back to my prep station. This industry is in for a reckoning soon.
Only if you're good. The better you are, the more responsibilities you get. It's like a promotion, but with the same pay! Isn't that fun! /s
Depends on the place, cook times, style of food and other logistics. My first line I worked an entire 50+ item menu with 200 seats alone, or with one other cook. There were 4 "stations" but we did not need a whole person for each station. The food was easy and our Chef had streamlined every process possible to lower workload and service times. For mother's Day and other crazy events we would run three cooks and a dishie. I also worked a breakfast grill for a few years with just 20 items and only 40 seats. There were three of us cooking pretty much constantly, one at each possible station.
The problem with seeming like that, is if the kitchen manager sees it's "not so bad" they'll send someone home. Gotta keep a chill day slightly out of the "not so bad" range to cut labor costs.
A fully staffed line is like a life filled with good and decent people. Very few will know that blessing.
In a perfect world, no. Each cook works their station and coordinates with the others for pick up times so all the food gets up at the same time. However, when your grill cook calls out 15min after he was supposed to be there, hot apps is on their second day and has no idea whats happening, and the saute cook is still hung over... You gotta do what you gotta do...
When I was at Dennys you were alone 5/6 shifts. Only shift you had help was Sunday morning and it was literally just pancakes. So yes, in my experience Iâve almost always ran multiple if not all stations
When I was at Dennyâs I could run the kitchen alone for the whole day. But not on the weekends. Granted we were the busiest Dennyâs in the country (Canada.) constantly top of sales. Weâd be doing about 500 covers during the week, 1500 on weekends. Thatâs just the morning shift. I attribute my very quick pace on the line to my time at Dennyâs, everywhere Iâve been since people ask me how Iâm so fast. Because I had to be.
Yep, this exactly, and I used to do the weekends for a year straight. They had me trapped with guilt because it took me two years to replace one cook. Yeah itâs bad when the $13-14 an hour cook(Florida) can out pace chefs
When weâre slow we usually have one working griddle/garm/expo and one working SautĂ©. But at peak hours we are properly staffed including expo. I will say that dipping food into fryers when you have only have two baskets on top of the salads menu gets backed up at times. But it is much less stressful than having 7 steaks on the board with a 10 top order walking in.
I prepped the entremetier until the late shift take over. Then I was left with an empty garde and had to restock that as well. There's 10 of us total but shifts are staggered so the only time we're full-staffed is service time. It's fun dedicating half of your station just to stock then a bunch of orders come in. It was sarcasm, I hate it.
Executive Chef at a 4 diamond resort here. I work every station from dish, prep, baking, sauté, fry, salad, and oven. I've never known a cook/chef (aside from a couple of corporate gigs) that hasn't worked at least a couple stations in a night even if "fully staffed".
Oh to be fully staffed like back in 2016.
All depends on experience, if they can manage that much, how busy it is. It helps while prepping to see where each station puts things especially if you have to jump and help, keeps the flow of food much faster with not much communication.
Depends, my last place was a hotel restaurant backed by Aspen Ski Co so they had people staffed up and ready to go. My current spot is a mom and pop so we have Chez and Dumbo working their first cook jobs.
Depends on volume and sales.
In my experience, yes. For the first couple hours I cover the whole line while the others prep and then when it gets busy I get some help, but I'm still covering at least two stations.
I work 5 nights a week. Wednesday and Thursday, I run the line alone. On the weekends, the AM will come help if i need it, but otherwise I run the line alone so she can run the rest of the store.
I have three stations on my line, for the AM two people run it unless it's a holiday like mother's day. For dinner I have anywhere from 3-6 people on. Later on unless again it's a holiday or special event I'm usually down to 1 cook by 11pm.
You have obviously never worked 10 cents wing night.
That's what drove me out of the kitchen and into the front of house. I was "trained" on 2 stations at once with 0 line experience and expected to open, run, and prep for both and be out at some exact time. It also drove out the next 3 people who they tried to do the same to. But as other commenter's said, yeah it's probably just trying to staff bare bones for strict labor hours.
Only if youâre lucky mate
I do a "raw bar" with that side of the station also dedicated to desserts. I also work another station dedicated to salads. Some busier days we will have one salad person and one for the rest. But I can run that station as a whole when it's relatively slow.
In my experience, usually it's the dishie. Once you get 'caught up' (if ever), you get passed around. Prep, backup, line, buss, sometimes register, maybe relieve someone from drive through, basically anywhere that needs help or an extra person. Usually it's just best to do the last 10 dishes real slow because you usually get borrowed for too long and come back to a shit show.
When I worked the line in 2021 I only worked more than one station when someone was on break during slow time. Occasionally weâd get a small rush where Iâd be tossing steaks, dropping onion rings, and firing burgers, but it wasnât ever unmanageable. Then again, I was schedule part time for peak hours
đđđ I get stuck running my whole line for 45 min or so quite often
I'm the pastry chef. This Saturday I worked dish, garde manger *and* still baked off a couple things. This was after I had worked my pastry shift already. This is the way. đ„Č
Fully staffed you only need to do your station, but if youâre short on people youâre gonna have 3 different jobs
We run 8-14 depending on business which means 3 on grill and fry during peak and maybe sauté has 2 as well as some floats for prep and to float the other stations. My crews the best.
Depends on the volume of each station
Always at 11
Maybe I'm weird, but *the kitchen* is your station. And good managers will put as many hands there as experience and volume dictate. Just because there is a grill and a fryer on one line doesn't mean you need a grill bitch and a fry guy. The better you are, the more things you can multitask the higher your value. Use that as leverage and don't let your manager take advantage of you.
Most kitchens that aren't fine dining expect you to be all over the place, from my experience at least. The lower a price point usually means the less well staffed a place is, unless you've got a manager who knows what theyre doing, but..... A lot of places would pay you less if they could, instead they use the industry standard pay, because they know they wouldn't be able to hold onto anyone otherwise. Then they take your wages and deduct them from their overhead, they have a number they're willing to spend on you, and even if an extra hand would mean better food getting out and less stress on the peoole who essentially keep them afloat, if it would cost more than that number, they won't add staff.
I've worked places that I ran the whole line solo or with 1 other guy, and I've worked places that have 1 or even 2 people per station or a couple floaters to help some people that are drowning. They both have their ups & downs, but being overstaffed always beats understaffed.
So on my line, there are 4 stations. Expo/plate, grill, saute, and fry. With the exception of myself and the kitchen manager, all our other cooks and dish guys are under 18 years old. For whatever reason, the chef has seen fit to send half the minors on break at 4, and the other half at 7. So most weekends, there is at least an hour where the KM is doing prep, and I do the line. It's possible, but it's also not ideal, and slow. I mean, I'm running in circles like a fucking maniac, but food doesn't come out as fast as it could.
Yes!
Usually I work the whole line until prep is finished then the prep guy hops on the line for the night shift basically.
I work at a steakhouse. Its a 2 man kitchen. I balance running the fryer, a flat top and veggie pot. And the oven for things like mac and cheese and potatoes. Then making pastas. It kinda sucks because when we get busy I simply cannot produce the quality of food that I would like to. I feel like if I were to move to a restaurant where I would be at one station it would be easier but idk.
I mainly work solo so I do all the stations. It gets annoying.
Good way to get experience, opening for a small restaurant. You'll have to learn to work every station and time things so everything is hot in the window at the same time.
You should know how to do anything/everything your kitchen needs when it needs it. Never know when co cook isn't feeling it that day.
Good ones do
Only if your kitchen is super tiny, youâre not busy enough to afford more cooks or your bosses are cheap
Damn, this literally describes my entire career in fine dining.
Yea Iâm a chef at a fine dining restaurant and I have one person at the very least on a station. Itâs part of the daily budget. If you canât afford enough people to run a line without you working it physically then reduce the size of the menu and focus on making that food the best it could be to build sales
I knew all the stations!! Short Order to fine dining. LOVE IT ALL!!! Even pantry.
If you're good at your job it shouldn't bother you