Hit 1000 covers on a random Tuesday and it broke my brain

I was just prepping for a normal dinner service when the ticket printer went crazy and we ended up serving 1000 people in one night, which is double our usual number, and I had to figure out how to keep my station organized with no warning at all, has anyone else had a surprise rush that totally threw off your mise en place?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry12d ago

...and suddenly you're just trying to not drown. My rule for surprise rushes like that is keep backup proteins prepped and labeled in the reach-in, so if the printer's screaming you can just grab and go. Also, I always stash an extra cambro of sliced veg and a big squeeze bottle of sauce in the lowboy for exactly this reason. Once you've done it a few times, you start building those little safety nets without thinking about it.

patricia_hayes1d ago

Jump straight into the weeds, @terry1. My backup plan is basically admitting I'm a mess - I keep a tub of pre-cooked bacon in the lowboy at all times because I know I'll forget to fire it during a rush. I've burned bacon so many times during surprise pushes that now I just grab a handful and don't even measure it. Also learned the hard way to keep backup squeeze bottles of aioli and hot sauce labeled with a sharpie, because nothing kills a ticket like hunting for the one you just emptied. My safety net is just me accepting I'll never be organized, just slightly less panicked.