Have you watched The Bear or seen Gordon Ramsay organize a restaurant staff in Kitchen Nightmares? Not the most tranquil, cordial, and harmonious work environments, wouldn’t you agree?
The truth is, that the nature of restaurant kitchen work can be intense, stressful, and filled with constant problems.
In these frantically fast-paced settings, kitchen managers play a central role.
Kitchen managers, also known as culinary managers, kitchen supervisors, kitchen directors, and culinary leads, are in charge of streamlining back-of-house operations in restaurants, bars, and other dining establishments.
Daily, they juggle various tasks, including training and supervising kitchen staff, handling customer complaints, addressing kitchen bottlenecks, coordinating food prep, and managing inventory.
Overall, kitchen managers cooperate with other departments to ensure kitchen operations run smoothly.
Join us in discovering what does a kitchen manager do and how a day in the life of a kitchen manager looks like.
What does a Kitchen Manager do?
A kitchen manager’s primary responsibility is to ensure smooth kitchen operations and guest satisfaction.
These restaurant professionals achieve this through various daily tasks, including staffing, scheduling, and supervision, overseeing food quality, managing inventory and food costs, and resolving customer complaints.
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Here’s a short rundown of typical kitchen manager responsibilities, though they may significantly vary based on the establishment’s needs:
- daily management of the restaurant’s back-of-house or kitchen operations
- food and labor costs control
- oversee food preparation
- ensure food preparation complies with health and safety regulations and HACCP
- hire, train, and supervise kitchen staff
- maintain an organized and clean kitchen, including inventory and equipment
- collaborate with different restaurant departments, such as management and human resources
- prepare monthly budget reports
A Typical Day in the Life of a Kitchen Manager
Restaurants are, in general, very hectic and manic workplaces. So, you can imagine what it is like for someone whose position represents a linchpin between restaurant management, back-of-house, front-of-house, and diners.
In a single hour, a kitchen manager can juggle numerous completely unrelated tasks. For example, they may need to place an order for out-of-stock items, revise employee scheduling to fit the desires of dozens of personnel, cover the host stand, call up a repairman, and reassure an impatient customer his perfectly delicious meal is soon coming.
Let’s take a closer look at what a typical day looks like.
# First Things First — Review the Logbook & Yesterday’s Summary
In the past, a physical journal; today, a digitized communication tool on the cloud. A logbook is crucial for kitchen managers to stay on top of all vital information regarding the kitchen staff, inventory, processes, and health and food standards.
Generally, a kitchen logbook includes reporting employee absences, conducting opening and closing checks, managing stock information including deliveries and identifying out-of-date stock, maintaining a cleaning schedule, overseeing health and safety guidelines, and much more.
A logbook ensures that kitchen managers can maintain seamless communication across shifts.
Another kitchen manager’s early morning duty is to review the Daily Sales Summary (DSS).
DSS is a basically snapshot of a restaurant’s daily performance, including sales, labor, tips, guest count, etc.
A daily overview of DSS enables kitchen managers to spot any potential issues and resort to solving them as soon as possible.
# Morning — Welcome & Stock Incoming Deliveries
Deliveries start arriving between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. At this time, the kitchen manager is dedicated to properly receiving, conducting a quality check, and correctly stocking new arrivals.
# Noon — Staff Meeting
The pre-shift staff meeting is the perfect time to discuss menu adjustments, daily specials, or any other dish-related questions.
Kitchen managers can use this slower period as an opportunity to coach and motivate employees, address housekeeping tasks, assign special tasks, discuss shift schedules, answer staff questions, etc.
# Early Afternoon — Managing Invoices
After the lunch peak, the kitchen managers shift their focus to handling invoicing for the supplies and ingredients used during service, as well as processing vendor payments for the goods and services received.
# Late Afternoon — Checking Inventory & Placing Orders
Kitchen managers need to check inventory levels and prepare the next shift for successful work.
Informing the next shift’s kitchen manager of the inventory levels allows them to modify the
menu in time and order items accordingly.
# End of the Shift — Record wastes
Before wrapping it up for the day, kitchen managers log item transfers and record food waste.
Reviewing waste logs daily helps restaurants understand their inventory and optimize food usage.
To Wrap Up
Being a kitchen manager is not for the faint of heart.
Within a single day, a kitchen manager takes up a myriad of restaurant activities, from ensuring customer satisfaction and addressing employee concerns to maintaining food supplies and safety standards — all while remaining accountable for guaranteeing the restaurant operates smoothly and profitably.
