We are in a very small rural town in GA. We are doing OK in sales, but I am trying to be a little more efficient in our man hours and also quicker during our lunch and dinner rushes. I believe that we can cut back on one shift if we did more prep work.
We currently grab a dough ball from the cooler and sheet and cook it to order. I am looking to buy a 48 pan pizza rack so that we can do more prep before the rushes. Do you have a method of what to roll out for each shift? I am going to look at our POS and see on average how much we sell of each (bread sticks, small, med, and large pizzas), but being in such a small town it is always different from night to night and week to week. I am sure we will either prep too many skins or not enough.
My questions are:
How long will the sheeted skins last in the rack at room temp?
Should I cover the rack to keep air from the skins?
Should I sauce and cheese before hand as well?
What can I do with the leftover skins at the end of the day? Can I save them for the next day or do they need to be tossed?
Thanks in advance for any guidance that you can give me.
If you use the skin, say in 20 minutes, you may not need to cover it from the ambient air…
If you want to keep it longer, we used to use a simple rolling enclosed metal box…we had 2 generic racks that held a dozen or so skins each…just watch so they dont stick…use well seasoned screens
Pre-pan, but with fresh dough. Post-mix temperature 80, then into the cooler. We use 15 space wire racks. That keeps more in the cooler that won’t go bad. Generally, a shell not used after 5-6 hours out is blown. But, the ones left in the cooler we use through the 3rd day. They do have to be brought to room temp before making the pizza, though, to avoid a huge gum line, and to enhance the rising.
Unless you are sure you will use the 48 every night, you might look at several smaller racks instead of one big one. Your cooler situation may dictate the one big rack, though.
When I do my scheduling I will break down my product hours, and have a spread sheet that calculates necessary employees by the half hour (I use an equation 18 products/hr per instore), and I always round down.
To counteract this I look at my anticipated sales volume, and keep a rack of about 8 - 12 14" skins up at all times. I usually put it up about 15 - 20 minutes before the start of the rush, and keep replenishing it until about 15 minutes before the end. I usually get about 45 minutes out of them if I couver the rack with a large garbage bag, as to keep the air from getting to it.
In the event I have to throw away the rack, it equates to approximately $2.5 (for the whole rack), which assuming that lasts me for a stretch to 1 hr, is a lot more cost effective than paying another employee $8/hr + payroll taxes.
Not sure if that is what you were looking for or not