The Saturday brunch service that nearly broke me, then fixed my prep system

Last month I ran a brunch shift at Jake's Diner in Tulsa where we got slammed with 92 covers in three hours. My station was a mess, tickets piling up, and I burned two orders of hollandaise trying to catch up. That night I sat down and mapped out a new prep list, timed every step, and cut my onion dice from 15 minutes to 6 by switching to a mandoline with a guard. Next Saturday we got 110 covers and I finished service 20 minutes early. Has anyone else had a disaster that forced you to rethink your whole mise en place?

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charles_coleman21d ago

Laughing at the idea of a mandoline with a guard being the fix. That thing has almost taken my fingertips off more times than I care to admit, so now I just wear a cut glove and pray. But yeah, my disaster was a Sunday brunch where I forgot to prep the sausage gravy and ended up making it from scratch mid-rush while juggling three omelet orders. Now I've got a timer set on my phone for every single prep item, and I still panic when I see a ticket for anything with more than three ingredients.