Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Navigating the Chaos of Bad Service Days in the Kitchen Ep. 96

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Navigating the Chaos of Bad Service Days in the Kitchen Ep. 96 · Chef's PSA Podcast

0:00
Hello, chefs. This is chefs PSA podcast. I'm
0:02
your host, Andre Netera. On today's episode, we're going
0:04
to talk about when service goes bad. Stay
0:07
tuned. This
0:19
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Sausage. Go to OldStyleSausage .com to
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find out more. Now, before I get started, just
0:54
a quick update. I've made some small adjustments
0:56
to the Culinary Leadership Fundamentals book. Basically,
0:59
I adjusted the cover so there's a new cover. I'm
1:02
working on a hardcover version of it. Hopefully,
1:05
we'll have that out in about a week or so. The
1:08
adjustments in the Culinary Leadership Fundamental are
1:10
non -noticable. It's just some formatting issues
1:12
in the new cover. You'd notice the new cover, but
1:15
other than that, you're not really going to notice
1:16
anything else in the book. I
1:17
thought about adding another chapter I decided not to.
1:20
Just as times have changed, I
1:22
thought about putting a chapter in there on more
1:25
modern tools for marketing and social media, as well
1:28
as AI. I decided not to. Anyway,
1:30
maybe I'll just keep focusing on the book that
1:32
I'm writing right now, which is called Bad Cooks
1:34
Everywhere. I am really into this book.
1:37
I started writing it and I'm
1:38
about a third of the way done. It's
1:40
different and it's intense. It's
1:43
unlike any of the other books that I've written
1:45
because it's a fictional narrative about a cook
1:48
going through some tough kitchens. Some
1:50
of the experiences might resonate with a lot of
1:53
you. I've had a lot of fun writing
1:54
this book. I've shared a couple of snippets
1:57
with some close friends of mine and they love it.
1:59
That book is in the works. I
2:01
will have it soon. Also, if you want to support the
2:04
show, go to chefspsa .com. You
2:06
get the merch there. You get the books there. I
2:09
have five free ebooks, including 100 basic recipes,
2:12
food cost mastery, a free culinary dictionary for
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those of you that need to brush up on your slang and
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your culinary jargon, as well as a critical path to
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opening up a restaurant and the 50 most important chefs
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PSA free ebook. It's a companion to the other
2:27
two books, Line Hooks, Revival Manual and How Not
2:30
to Be the Biggest City in the Kitchen. You
2:32
get all the books there as well as the culinary
2:34
leadership fundamentals, which we talked about
2:36
kitchen art of war, bad Sue Goodshaw. And
2:38
if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you hit
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the subscribe and the like button. If
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you're listening to the podcast on other platforms
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less than five stars. If you're thinking about
2:49
leaving four stars, stop listening, go somewhere
2:52
else, only five stars. Your four stars can go on those
2:56
other podcasts, not this one. This
2:58
past week, I got a chance to go visit one of my
3:00
good friends, Matthew Peters, Bocoustillor winner
3:03
from the United States in 2017, first American to
3:07
ever win the Bocoustillor. He
3:08
has a place that he's opening called Prelude here
3:11
in Austin, Texas. And I got to say, I was quite
3:13
impressed. Very beautiful. I
3:15
didn't want to leave yet to throw me out. Cocktails
3:17
were amazing. So shout out to those guys.
3:19
They have something special going
3:20
on. If you're in Austin, get on
3:22
the waiting list because it's not going to be easy
3:24
to get into. You might see me there all the
3:26
time. So anyway, shout out to my
3:28
friend. It's always good to see good
3:29
people do good things. I also have a dinner coming
3:33
up on May 29th. El Paso family meal will be
3:35
cooking at Boccalar. My friend gave a Rallis
3:38
restaurant, a group of chefs from El Paso,
3:41
showcasing what we're going to do there. So
3:43
if you're in the Austin area and you want to come
3:45
say hi and you want to come try some good Mexican
3:47
cooking, come check us out at Boccalar. It
3:50
goes to a good cause. You can say hi to me. So
3:52
I will also be doing a demo at a culinary
3:54
conference here in Austin, Texas. I'll
3:56
be doing a little fish demo if you happen to be
3:58
at that career fair. Go check it out. It's
4:00
put on by the Texas Food and Wine Alliance. I'm
4:03
busy this month, man. Big things coming. Chefs
4:05
PSA. We digress. Where
4:07
were we? Bad service. We've
4:10
all had bad services, right? Some
4:11
are worse than others. I did a podcast early on in
4:14
the Chefs PSA series about what causes the worst
4:17
service ever. And I talked about the worst
4:20
service I ever had, which was on a snow day.
4:22
Actually, the two worst services I
4:24
ever had were on snow days. Once
4:26
was in this snowpocalypse that we had in Texas that
4:29
shut everything down. And we were like, we were like
4:32
a week away from total chaos in the streets of
4:35
people looking for food. But
4:36
anyway, we got our power back. That
4:39
was a crazy time. Another crazy time was during a
4:41
snowstorm when I was a chef in Dallas and school
4:44
was canceled. Everyone called off and they were
4:46
showing frozen next door to the place where I was the
4:50
chef at and minimal staff and everyone showed up to
4:53
eat lunch. Bad service. Anyway,
4:56
those are the two worst services I've ever had. But
4:58
let's talk about bad services because we've all
5:00
had them. They're not escapable. The
5:03
best thing you could do is get through it, right?
5:06
Sometimes the tickets just line up.
5:08
You're underprepared because you
5:09
don't have enough staff or you had the right amount
5:11
of staff, but you didn't prep or they sat the
5:13
entire dining room and you didn't know it. Something
5:15
always goes wrong and you have a very bad service.
5:18
Maybe they ordered everything that
5:19
was 86 or you burnt the steak. The
5:21
Ansel system went off. It could be a thousand little
5:23
things, but we've all had those bad services. But
5:26
as the chef, when you notice that the kitchen's
5:29
about to be going down in flames, figuratively, I've
5:31
seen a lot of chefs and myself included. You
5:34
know, you hit the panic button and you don't know
5:35
what to do. But with experience, you start
5:37
to be calm. Everyone's feeding off your energy,
5:40
especially the line cooks. If
5:41
the chef panics, the cooks panic. But
5:43
if the chef is calm and focused, has command and
5:46
control, no one else panics. It's
5:49
really easy to get flustered when that ticket
5:51
machine keeps going off and haunts your nightmares. I
5:54
mean, how many times have you been asleep? And
5:58
you wake up to the sound of the ticket printer only
6:00
to find out that you're in your nice little cozy bed.
6:03
That ticket printer is the stuff
6:04
of nightmares, man. And every chef knows that
6:06
sound. And what's interesting is like,
6:08
when you hear that ticket printer a lot, eventually
6:10
you can know what the order is. Like
6:12
I know, I know chefs that could predict what's coming
6:14
out on the ticket just by the sound of it. Or
6:16
is it a void or a don't make? Because
6:19
it makes a slightly different sound when it's a
6:21
nonorder. I used to work with this one
6:24
guy, I would always work in the past, and I would
6:26
go to pull the ticket and he would say, it's a don't
6:28
make or it's a void. You don't need to worry about
6:30
it. Not always check. He
6:31
was always right. Like, it has a certain ring to
6:34
it. You know what I'm talking about
6:36
if you know those prayers, but where were we? Ah,
6:39
it's important as the chef that you recognize those
6:40
situations. Because everyone's going to be
6:43
feeding off your energy good or bad. And
6:45
knowing that you have that much effect on it, you're
6:48
better off having the good, calm energy. The
6:51
only reason I say that is because I've done both.
6:53
I've pulled out of situations
6:55
because of the good, calm energy, because everyone's
6:57
panicky. And I say, don't worry, it's
6:59
going to be fine. We're going to get through this
7:00
together. Everyone stay calm. Focus
7:02
on the few tickets that are in front of you. Don't
7:05
worry about everything else. You
7:06
can only do this many at a time. Sometimes
7:08
when I'm working as the expediter, I will start
7:10
communicating to them. That way they don't got to look
7:12
at the tickets like, okay, drop three more steaks,
7:15
cook four more chicken. Don't
7:17
forget about the thing that's in the oven. Because
7:20
sometimes the line cooks get so overwhelmed with
7:23
everything that they have in front of them, they
7:25
need a calming voice that's not panicked. That's
7:27
just telling them what motions to do. They
7:31
go on autopilot. And they just want to know
7:33
turn the steak, check it. That's
7:35
medium rare. Don't forget to rest it. While
7:37
it's resting, go slice this other steak. Don't
7:39
forget to check on that in the oven. Anyway,
7:42
you get the point in these high pressure situations as
7:45
the leader, you have to reassure them that you're
7:47
going to get through it. This
7:48
is where you become the air traffic controller. You
7:51
start directing everyone you start directing the service
7:53
team. And by the way, if you're on
7:54
the service team, one of the worst things that you
7:56
could do when the kitchen is crashing is stand right
8:00
there and watch the chef. Like
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it does not cook faster by you watching them. It
8:05
also doesn't cook faster when the service member
8:08
says how long on this one? How
8:10
long? And they keep they keep asking
8:12
you and you're like, is there any way we could get
8:15
it faster? No, do you not notice that
8:17
there's a full rail of tickets? And
8:19
I get it where they're coming from they're
8:20
panicked. They want to take care of the
8:21
guest that the guest is asking. But
8:23
if you're the service staff and you just sit there
8:26
asking them how long, how long, how long and you're
8:29
staring at the person who's trying to call the orders,
8:31
you're not making the situation better. Right?
8:34
You're distracting and you're being disruptive. So
8:36
as the chef, or as the leader of you're running
8:39
the kitchen, if you're running the past, it's
8:40
important that you get them out of the way you send
8:43
them about you tell them go check on your tables.
8:45
This ticket is approximately this
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far gone. It's going to take about 30
8:49
minutes and then take 20 more minutes, whatever the
8:51
case may be, be honest with them. This
8:53
is the time that as the leader, you have to start
8:55
jumping into mitigation mode, you might need to
8:57
send out some appetizers, or tell them to pour some
9:00
wine, or go talk to them, whatever the case may be,
9:02
you might want to get the manager involved and say,
9:04
Hey, we're really dragging on this table. You
9:06
need to go touch it. Make sure that they're happy. A
9:09
lot of kitchens go off different systems. Some
9:12
places have computer screens where they're looking at
9:14
the orders. Other times it's the chef
9:15
calling, or there is no chef calling. Sometimes
9:18
the cooks are just looking at their tickets, a
9:20
thousand different system. If
9:22
you have no system one that works really well is
9:24
to try and pick up the tickets in group. So
9:26
a batch system or a pick system say, Okay, you're
9:29
bringing me these next three. After
9:31
those, you're bringing me these next four, or try to
9:33
group similar tickets. So for example, you have three
9:37
tickets that are very similar. You
9:39
say, Bring me these three right now. Because
9:41
you know, sometimes getting those out will alleviate
9:43
the bottleneck on the line. And
9:45
sometimes you could see just a very simple ticket
9:47
that you say, Hey, that one ticket with the salad
9:51
just send it out because it's going to cause a
9:53
bottleneck. If we don't get that one
9:55
straggling ticket out of the way. So
9:57
the person that's running really has to understand
9:59
the team that they're working with service team,
10:01
culinary team, know the food very well, know where
10:04
the problems are going to be, know where the pressure
10:06
points are going to come in, you know, they ordered
10:07
the well done Porter house state. It's
10:10
going to take a little bit longer. Move
10:12
that to the back, pump out some of the smaller tickets
10:14
first. It's important that you know
10:16
your team and you know your kitchen even better,
10:18
you're getting ahead of it. And
10:19
you're talking about it at pre shift and saying based
10:21
on the amount of reservations that we have,
10:23
based on the staff that I have in the kitchen and
10:25
based on the product that we have from seven to
10:27
eight, it's a pressure point. We
10:29
run the potential of having long ticket time. So
10:31
this is when you want to sell more appetizer, get
10:34
more wine on the table, more cocktails, slow them
10:37
at the door. We're not taking any seating from
10:39
walk ins during that time, right? So
10:41
having a plan because look, a lot of restaurants run
10:46
their kitchens and their restaurant services very
10:48
well and a lot of them don't. So
10:50
some of you are thinking we got that covered while
10:51
others are thinking at the door, it's out of control.
10:54
The host or the hostess is
10:55
just seating people randomly, servers are
10:58
running around with their heads cut off. Tickets
11:00
don't stop coming in. The one server took too many
11:03
orders, pocketed the tickets and rang them all in at
11:05
once. And they rang in the item that
11:06
we were 86 after the fact. And
11:08
don't forget, there's always that one cook who says
11:11
chef, that's the last fish I had. What
11:13
what are you talking about? I
11:14
just sold the last fish. Do
11:16
you have everything on the board? No,
11:18
I'm telling you, I just sold the last fish I have
11:19
nothing on the board. Meanwhile,
11:21
those tickets on the board have been up for like 20
11:24
minutes. And now you got to go get the
11:26
server and say, Hey, I just found out we 86 the
11:30
fish and I have none of these tables covered. What's
11:32
the plan? As I'm saying that my anxiety
11:34
is going up. Because I've been in those
11:37
situations. So if you're the cook
11:39
listening, never 86 anything after the fact that's the
11:42
old chef's PSA amateur hour, a professional has
11:45
their counts, count everything. Count
11:47
everything. Count everything. Three
11:49
very important rules. And when you're not sure, count
11:52
again. A lot of people like to 86
11:54
with just a few in the bank, because there's always
11:56
those orders that come in after the fact. So
11:58
some people 86 with three in I get depending on the
12:01
size of your restaurant, you might 86 with one in
12:03
10 in, right? If you organize your mise en
12:07
place. So everything is correct. So
12:09
let's just say you're talking about steak in a
12:11
pan and you have 10 steaks in a pan, every single pan
12:14
beyond that should have 10 steak. So
12:17
that way when you're doing your count, and you know
12:19
you have three pans, you know you have 30 steaks.
12:22
And when you've sold two pans,
12:24
you know you only have 10 left. And
12:27
that's when you start saying, Hey, I'm down to
12:29
10 steaks. Put the count in, spread the
12:32
word. Nothing's worse than just chilling on
12:35
the line with the cooks. You
12:37
think it's gonna be an easy night. You
12:39
guys are cracking jokes. Someone's
12:40
making the family meal for the second time because
12:43
it's slow. And they're thinking, I'm going
12:46
to make some disco fries, we're slow. You
12:50
guys hungry? And then boom, no one told you
12:53
their entire restaurant got sat. And
12:55
while you're sitting there chilling, eating your disco
12:58
fries, thinking you're going to get out early, you
13:01
haven't seen a server in the kitchen for about 20
13:05
minutes and quiet. They haven't come back to harass
13:08
you, asked you for a snack. You
13:12
have one ticket, two tickets, three tickets,
13:16
four, five tickets, tickets to the floor. Chaos
13:20
ensues, right? No one bothered to warn you.
13:23
And now you have a mess on
13:24
your hand. What do you do? Right?
13:26
We've all been there. Stay calm. Start
13:28
cooking. Take control. Then
13:30
after that, talk about it. What
13:32
went right? What went wrong? You
13:33
have a post shift meeting. You
13:34
talk about the highlights, you talk about the low
13:36
lights. This is what we did. Well,
13:38
if this happens again, this is what we need to do to
13:40
improve. Maybe your printers went down and
13:42
you had to have a crash kit. And
13:44
you started taking orders by hand. Old
13:46
school, your credit card machine stopped working. One
13:48
of the cooks called off. There's
13:50
numerous reasons why things could go sideways, but it's
13:53
important that you are able to mitigate them and you
13:55
should have a plan of mitigation for every
13:58
potential situation that could happen. Of
14:01
course, there's going to be the ones that you can't
14:03
even think about because they never happen. But
14:06
most of the things that will go wrong, someone's
14:09
experienced them. There's not a whole lot of new
14:11
ones that will pop up. So it's important that you
14:13
know what to do in those situations. After
14:15
you get through it, how do you recover? You
14:17
celebrate with the team. There's
14:18
nothing, there's no better feeling than going through
14:22
the shit with your people, right? And
14:26
you guys and you and maybe you said some things that
14:29
were inappropriate. You yelled at them. They
14:31
yelled at you. You guys argued. Why
14:34
did you not say anything? You
14:36
used all my chives. Why did you 86 it after the
14:38
fact? But when you get through, you
14:40
smile and you say, I'm glad I went through it
14:44
with you better than anyone else, right? Enjoy
14:46
the team. Sometimes when I sit back and I
14:48
think about bad services that I've gone through, no
14:50
longer being a chef, being retired, sometimes I wish I
14:53
could have those bad services with people that
14:55
I'm close to. I don't know. Maybe
14:56
not the bad service, maybe the good services, but
14:58
sometimes the bad services were more fun, right? How
15:00
many stories do you tell about good services?
15:02
Probably not that many. How
15:03
many services that are bad, you tell the story to
15:06
everyone, oh, this one time, right? So
15:08
sometimes we do live in the bad services, but the
15:11
reason we like talking about them is because we
15:12
learn from them. It's a learning opportunity for
15:14
us to get better, 1 % better every day. Learn
15:17
from your bad services, get better. The
15:19
other day, I put up a video on chef's PSA about
15:22
one of the cooks that I was working with because
15:24
anything can go wrong that could cause the bad
15:27
service. It could be, you know, the
15:28
cook gets hurt, you have to send them home. This
15:31
guy dropped a pepper mill or tongs in the fryer and
15:34
he stuck his hand in the fryer and burned himself.
15:37
And I said it was the worst
15:37
thing I'd ever seen. Incorrect.
15:40
I lied because after I posted that video, I
15:42
remember there was a worse one that I saw. Someone
15:44
had put a bucket of broken glass on the dish station
15:48
and the dishwasher was working by himself and he
15:50
didn't notice and he stuck his hand in and he cut a
15:53
big chunk of flesh out of the palm of his hand right
15:56
here. And he was bleeding everywhere.
15:57
He's a tough older guy from El
16:00
Salvador. I mean, he'd been in several
16:02
wars and he was he was he was unfazed. He
16:05
was a he was a gangster. And
16:07
so I freaked out when I saw him because everyone
16:09
called me like chef. Someone's
16:11
so bleeding. Go check him out. I
16:12
was like, shit, what do I do? Blood
16:14
everywhere. He's got a big chunk of flesh
16:18
coming out of his hand. He's
16:20
the only dish washer working. So
16:21
going through my mind is like, shit, we're gonna
16:23
have to wash dishes. And we got to get this guy to
16:27
the hospital. So I'm trying to solve two
16:28
problems at once. And he's like, no, no, no, no,
16:30
don't worry about it. He's like, just give me some
16:33
scissors. I was like, scissors for
16:35
what? He's like, I'm just gonna cut
16:36
off the skin. I was like, what are you
16:37
talking about? That's like a big, that's like
16:40
three ounces of flesh. You're
16:41
just gonna cut it off. He's
16:42
like, yeah, just give me some scissors. It's
16:43
not a problem. I'll just I'll just wrap it up
16:45
and cut it off. And one of the cooks brought
16:48
him some Joyce Chen kitchen shears and he was thinking
16:51
of cutting it off. I stopped him. I
16:52
was like, absolutely not. You're
16:54
not gonna cut chunk of skin out of your hand so
16:58
you can keep watching dishes. I
16:59
insisted that he go to the hospital. But
17:01
he was like seconds away from cutting the flesh of
17:04
his hand off just so he can continue working. It
17:06
was absolutely insane. Bonkers,
17:08
you see a lot of crazy things in the kitchen.
17:10
That's just one story. But
17:11
I've seen a lot of dumb stuff. I've
17:12
done a lot of dumb stuff. But
17:13
while we're on the subject, I once worked for an
17:16
executive chef that stuck his hand in the large
17:19
floor mixer. And it got broken several
17:23
places because he thought it would be faster to
17:25
scrape the bowl than the than the paddle attachment.
17:28
That was scary. Anyway,
17:30
kids don't stick your hand in the fryer. Don't
17:32
stick your hand in bucket of broken glass and don't
17:34
stick your hand in the mixer because we talked
17:38
about bad services. That's gonna make it more than
17:40
just a bad service. Anyway, chef fiasse is on sub
17:43
stack. There's exclusive podcasts on their
17:46
leadership secrets. Winning the game. I'm
17:49
about to put another one up on the tools that I
17:51
use in the kitchen and show you my setup. So
17:54
if you want exclusive content outside of this
17:57
podcast, go subscribe to the sub stack. I
17:59
think it's only $10. You get free ebooks, audio
18:02
books, leadership training that's only available there.
18:05
Or you could rent it for $8
18:07
or $48 but for $10 might as well get it on sub
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stack. Get chef brain. You're
18:13
gonna go to the gas station and get a hot dog
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and a slurpee for $10 anyway. That's
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not gonna do you any good. Chef
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brains is gonna do you good. Make
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you a better chef. Anyway, don't forget to like and
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subscribe. If you listen on Spotify, make
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sure you leave five stars, nothing less than five
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stars. Go to chef's PSA .com get
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everything and we'll see you next week. Hit
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the porno music.