CHAPTER
12

Laying Out the Back of the House

In This Chapter

• Creating a functional kitchen
• Setting up efficient workstations
• Some equipment your staff will need
• Safely storing food and supplies
• Why you only need a small office space

In this chapter, we’re going to talk about the design and layout of the back of the house. We’ll look at the work that needs to be done there, the timing of that work, making the most of the space available, and how to set up the stations for the cooks and the all-important dishwasher. We’ll also look at the equipment you’ll need to run a restaurant kitchen.

The back of the house is used for other functions besides cooking. Goods and products are delivered here, and must be stored and organized. We’ll discuss the best places to safely store products, prep ingredients, and have them ready for the chef to cook.

The back of the house also contains your office. This office should be small, but organized and functional.

Working Space

Functionality is key in the back of the house. Understanding what you do in each space is essential for planning the space. What tasks need to be performed? How many people need to work in the space? How will they move through the space? The basic rule is, keep what’s needed close at hand—the fewer the steps, the better. Reach-in freezer drawers could be placed right next to the fryer, so the cook has easy access to frozen fries, wings, or dumplings—whatever the most popular dishes are. During service, you don’t want a cook to have to leave the line to run to the walk-in freezer to locate more fries. That breaks down the system.

The back of the house takes up one fourth to one third of your total restaurant space. Along with the kitchen, the back of the house also has receiving and storage areas for dry, refrigerated, and frozen food; locked storage for valuable inventory; staff lockers, cubbies, changing areas, and a staff bathroom; and your office.

The Kitchen

Restaurant kitchens are divided into stations. Within each station, there are fixed equipment pieces necessary to execute the restaurant’s core menu items. The equipment you need varies according to your restaurant’s concept.

The basic stations are sauté, grill, fry, salads, appetizers, and desserts. There may also be an assembly station or two for garnish and pickup. The expeditor station, arguably the most important station, is located near where the servers set up their trays.

DEFINITION

The expeditor is the connection between the front of the house and the back of the house during service. Usually it’s the executive chef or the chef-owner. The expeditor inspects the plated dishes to make sure they’re what the diner ordered and that they’ve been cooked to order. He or she adds a final garnish and tells the server to pick up and deliver. Managers should give the expeditor a heads-up when a large party or VIP is in the dining room.

As we discussed in Chapter 9, your kitchen will operate more efficiently if you spread your menu over a number of stations, so that no one station gets backed up. (If your restaurant’s concept puts additional work on a particular station, have two line cooks work it.)

You’ll find that some kitchen equipment is essential and other equipment might not be needed in your kitchen.

Necessary equipment:

• Stove(s)
• Grill
• Deep fryer(s)
• Exhaust hoods
• Salamander (a mini broiler used for melting cheese and browning surfaces)
• Walk-in refrigerators
• Walk-in freezer
• Reach-in refrigerators
• Reach-in freezers
• Food processor
• Blender
• Standing mixers
• Sinks
• Dishwasher

Optional equipment:

• Pizza oven
• Hardwood grill
• Meat slicer
• Heating lamps
• Heat trays
• Rice cooker
• Pasta makers
• Ice machine
• Ice cream maker
• Juicers
• Dehydrators
• Vacuum packager and sous-vide cooker

DEFINITION

Sous-vide is a cooking technique in which food is cooked super low and slow (temperatures vary according to thickness and cut) in a bath of circulating water. Meats or proteins are vacuum-packed with flavorings and placed in the water. The result is exceptionally tender proteins. Chefs also experiment with cooking desserts, such as cheesecakes, sous-vide in mason jars.

Jody doesn’t use microwave ovens in his restaurants. However, some restaurateurs find microwaves can be handy to heat cooked tapas or appetizers that are served hot to lukewarm. Microwaving in the serving dish saves the dishwasher from washing a pan. However, the downside of the microwave is that unless you really blast it, the food doesn’t stay hot long. Making it worse, when you get slammed and orders are flying off the printer, you’re cramming the microwave full to keep up with the rush, and the food’s not getting hot enough. Your appetizers or tapas are tepid by the time they reach your guests’ table. Use a sauté pan to reheat cold dishes thoroughly and efficiently during rushes.

Exhaust hoods and ventilation systems are required over all your cooktops. They remove smoke, grease, and steam, and replace the tainted air with tempered air. Specialty equipment, such as pizza ovens or hardwood grills, requires special ventilation and the ventilated air needs to be balanced for a smoke-free environment. Discuss your equipment plans with your health and fire departments first, and find out exactly what type of ventilation and hoods they require before installing them.

Cold Prep

Cold prep can be isolated from the kitchen, or set off from the main action on the line. Salads, cold dishes, and often desserts are prepped, assembled, and plated here. This station has reach-in fridges and freezer (optional, but handy if frozen items will be prepped here), and could include a deli slicer for cured meat dishes such as dry sausages and aged hams.

Microwave ovens are sometimes used (but not in Jody’s restaurants) to take the chill off desserts like carrot cake or chocolate cake, or to heat cold-prepped items like meatballs, sausages, and figs. Sometimes there’s a small deep fryer in the pantry area to fry goat cheese balls for the beet salad, for instance, or to fry the empanada appetizer.

Pastry

Desserts, if they’re made in-house, are made in a separate area in the bowels of the restaurant. Pastry chefs start early in the morning, and aren’t around during service. Whether your concept calls for special desserts, the added labor cost of a pastry chef is something you’ll need to consider. Markups on desserts can run about 35 percent, but it’s rare that an entire table will order them unless it’s a special occasion.

Portions today are large, and by the time dessert rolls around, fewer people have room. If dessert is tempting enough, for instance, two couples will share two desserts. There are a couple options for serving desserts without having a pastry chef. You can add dessert-making to the sous chef’s duties, and keep it simple. You can also supplement with purchased desserts; however, they won’t meet the quality of house-made, you have less portion control over them, and the profit margin will be lower. Garnish, a swirl of caramel sauce, a dollop of whipped cream, or a piping of raspberry sauce can make them seem more special.

But even if you’re taking the easiest way out and purchasing ice cream for dessert (that’s where the reach-in freezer in the cold-prep station comes in handy), let that ice cream speak to your concept. If your restaurant is Southwestern, offer ice cream that will get your customers talking. How about sweet corn ice cream with spicy chocolate dessert sauce mole?

The traditional French brigade had both a pastry chef and a baker. Over time, the two jobs were consolidated. Today, few pastry chefs bake their own bread because it’s time-consuming. Fine homemade desserts can make your restaurant stand out. Whether you have the space to dedicate to desserts, the resources to devote to labor and the ability to project a profit from desserts will take some consideration.

When your doors open for dinner and your cooks are on the line, they need to be able to complete each dish for service by being able to reach the prepared ingredients—known as the mise en place—tools, and equipment without walking. Steps should be kept at a minimum.

There are four steps to completing a dish:

1. Prepare the mise en place; have all your raw and cooked ingredients prepared—cleaned, peeled, chopped, portioned, and measured—and ready in containers at the cook or chef’s station.

2. Assemble, combine, and cook the ingredients of your mise en place.

3. Plate the dish and garnish. The expeditor, usually the executive chef, checks the dish, touches up, and adds the final garnish.

4. Serve the dish. The server or a runner and a server promptly deliver the dishes to the table.

Economies of Scale

When prepping, think economies of scale. Plan to make several days’ worth of menu items that keep well. Doing so will reduce your cost of production because it saves on labor costs. It spreads out the cost of the long set-up time over more products, and reduces your production cost per unit of the dish.

When planning your prep space, think about your menu, how many items you’ll be making ahead of time, and how much space is needed. Plan your prep work to take advantage of economies of scale whenever possible.

A cook’s mise en place can include chopped raw and pre-cooked ingredients. Depending on the complexity of your dishes, certain components might require multiple steps. The mise might include sliced garlic, roasted garlic cloves, chocolate sauce or whipped cream in piping bags, partially cooked risotto, crepes, braised duck, short ribs, slow-roasted pork, fresh-cut green beans, chopped parsley, fresh lemon juice, partially cooked lobster tails, or cut filets of fish. When you plan your kitchen, think about what the cooks will be making and how much room they’ll need to prep, cook, and store their mise.

Storage Space

Bulk storage should be limited to lower-value real estate. If possible, shelving near the receiving entrance is a good place. Health departments don’t want bags of food and ingredients stored on the floor. Make sure your storage area is dry and has adequate ventilation to prevent mold. It also must be free of rodents and insects.

SMART MOVE

Use coated metro shelving to prevent tarnish in your walk-ins. Lockable and organized storage is important—you’re dealing with perishable inventory worth thousands of dollars. Clearly label food products with dates. Rotate your stock, so you use the oldest products first.

The kitchen refrigeration should hold enough mise en place to get through an entire meal service without needing to be replenished. Decide if you want your line cooks to be responsible for their own mise at their stations, or if the prep cooks are responsible for all the mise for all stations, or a combination of the two.

If you get unexpectedly slammed during dinner service and start running low on items, have your sous chef ready to run to the walk-ins and restock before you run out. When you run out of items, when a line cook is searching in the back walk-in for more thawed squid, you’re pulling a cook off the line and the orders become backlogged. As a result, the line cooks, expeditors, servers, and managers get stressed. Now you’re in the weeds. Plan ahead and don’t let your mise get too low.

DEFINITION

In the weeds is kitchen slang for getting slammed, being swamped, and falling behind during service. It happens on busy nights, and it can create a downward spiral. You must train your sous chef to be ready to jump in to help the line cooks at a moment’s notice to prevent getting in the weeds.

Having refrigerated drawers located by cooking tops is the modern way to execute â la minute. Steam tables are a bit of a dinosaur, as holding cooked food at temperature for service dilutes quality and taste (not to mention it comes under more regulation by the health department). Keep your drawers stocked with your mise. Keep cooked meat and raw vegetable mise in a top drawer, and raw meats and seafood in the bottom drawer.

Locking storage will be essential for linen, liquor, and other expensive items. If you don’t have a dedicated storage room, use your office. A tall lockable storage unit can be built of inexpensive chicken wire and 2 × 4 lumber.

Delicate glasses and stemware should be hand-washed or washed under counter at the bar to avoid breaking. Your glassware’s quality elevates the experience of your restaurant and can be reflected in the prices. But for the beginning restaurateur, we recommend purchasing sturdy glasses that are less likely to break and are dishwasher-safe.

Staff Area

Many states require that staff have a dedicated area with lockers. They can bring their own locks, and lock up their personal items during their shifts. Don’t permit staff to bring backpacks and packages into the restaurant. That rule will help prevent theft.

These lockers are daily cubbyhole storage. The staff area also needs a big laundry basket for dirty uniforms. You don’t want the staff leaving uniforms in their lockers overnight, because it causes odors and cleanliness issues. Should you have a washing machine and dryer to wash uniforms and linens? We recommend using a professional linen service for a clean professional look. You can’t wash out food stains and grease using a normal civilian machine; you need industrial strength. (Be sure the service charges only for dirty pick-up and not a static inventory.)

We knew a restaurant owner who wanted to save money on uniforms by having his own washer and dryer. Those were some sad gray, dull, tired uniforms his vibrant staff put on each day. It was bad for morale; it showed the owner didn’t care about his staff. And it was bad for business. The staff didn’t look crisp and clean, and the business floundered.

The Office

Make your office space tiny. A restaurant requires people to be on the battlefield, not sitting in an office on the phone during dinner service.

When you consider we clean, chop, slice, primp, and stage all day for an hour and a half at lunch and three hours at dinner (the peak business times), we really should be in the middle of the action and focused on work for those few hours.

The restaurant’s office has just a few purposes:

• Counting money
• Storing limited files
• Disciplining staff

All other business should take place in the dining room or kitchen. Many chefs share office space with the general manager (GM).

POTENTIAL PITFALL

A staff bathroom is essential in all good dining establishments. Staff should not share the customers’ restroom. But be warned: don’t make the staff bathroom too remote from work areas. Don’t let it become a place for staff to hide.

The office door needs a deadbolt lock so it can be locked inside as well as from outside. Restaurants can be large and have basements, corridors, and plenty of places for an intruder to hide. At the end of the evening, it’s a good practice to do a walk-through of the entire space with another staff member to make sure the restaurant is empty. After that staff member leaves, lock yourself in to count the money.

Jody has been robbed twice in his restaurants. Once with a gun, which turned out to be plastic, but he grew up in Greenwich so he had no clue until the police found it and smirked at him for thinking it was real.

Equip your restaurant with alarms; they need to be direct to the police to be effective. If they just buzz, beep, or wail, they’re about as effective as a car alarm. It’s simply a nuisance. Motion sensors and door-window contacts are the best alarm systems. Shop for reasonable monthly monitoring fees combined with free or inexpensive installation from the same firm. Restaurant association discounts are available with many services.

Today’s technology allows owners to monitor the BOH from offsite. There’s an app that will let you know if the temperature has gone off in the freezer and fridge. Anaren Cellular Machines sells a Temperature Monitoring Kit for about $500. Camera systems can be activated and monitored from a smart phone. Alarms can also be armed from a smart phone.

Advisors

If you’re new to the restaurant business and/or have never cooked in a restaurant kitchen, seek advice from a seasoned professional. You can hire a consultant or chef to review your menu and the back of the house design. You don’t want the consultant to come up with plans to move the plumbing and gas lines. Hire them to analyze your needs and retrofit your kitchen for optimum use.