Burned through 20 pounds of onions in one shift and it flipped my view on prep work

I used to think dicing onions was just busy work, but last Saturday we had a 200-cover dinner rush and I ran out of mirepoix by 6pm. Had to stop service and chop on the fly, which killed our ticket times for a solid 45 minutes. Has anyone else had a prep shortage ruin a night and change how you plan your morning?

2 comments

2 Comments

emerycarr1mo ago

I have to push back on "prep shortage ruin a night." Look, part of cooking is being able to adapt on the spot. If you're running a 200-cover dinner and your whole system falls apart because you didn't chop enough onions, that's a planning problem, not a prep problem. You should have had a backup plan or a faster way to get through those onions during the rush. Plus, over-prepping leads to waste, and that hurts your bottom line way more than a few slow ticket times.

harper_wright1mo ago

Yeah "over prepping leads to waste" is the part that really sticks with me. Because it's not just about the cost of the extra onions or whatever you chopped, it's also the time you spent doing it that could have been used for something else. I've seen places where the line cooks just prep everything to the max every shift out of habit and then you're throwing away half a cambro of diced peppers at the end of the night. That adds up fast. And honestly, if your whole system really does fall apart over missing onions, that says more about how you built the system than the onions themselves. You should have a plan for when you run out of something, even if it's just having a faster way to get more or swapping in a different veg for a few minutes. The best kitchens I've worked in treat prep like a living thing you adjust as you go, not a rigid checklist you panic over.