Our current busy-night make line sort of evolved as we learned. However, I’m not convinced it’s the most efficient.
Let me describe my setup right now:
We have 2 double stack ovens. Two are used for Chicagos, two for thins. Our prep table is directly in front of the ovens as is the cut table on one end and a small prep table and warmer on the other. Here’s a crappy diagram:
========Oven=Oven
Warmer=Preptable=Cut Table
Our “alley” is barely large enough for two grown men to get by.
On busy nights, we have one guy on the server side of the cut-table. His job is to manage all the tickets and tell the others what to do. He also expedites the food. We call him the wheel. This is usually me or our KM. We only use a wheel when we are very busy and it’s usually only for 3-4 hours.
On the other side of the cut table is the “oven guy” whose sole job is to pull pizzas and cut them as well as to notify the wheel so that food can be staged properly. That leaves two people on the line to make pizzas and occasionally three. Our make table is big enough that each of the two cooks can have their own station of sauce/cheese/basic meats. They share the vegetables in the middle.
Taking the tickets out of the cooks hands seems to make them much faster - they can just focus on the one individual task at hand. They are trained to look up when done and holler “next pizza” and are not worried about timing or staging at all.
This works pretty efficiently for us, but I’m considering moving to a more “assembly” line style system. Frankly, I’m having a hard time stepping back and looking at my own operation b/c we’ve done it this way for so long. So any fresh ideas or descriptions of how you guys do it would be helpful. On a busy night, we sell about 140 pizzas if that helps.
Thanks for your thoughts in advance.
Let me describe my setup right now:
We have 2 double stack ovens. Two are used for Chicagos, two for thins. Our prep table is directly in front of the ovens as is the cut table on one end and a small prep table and warmer on the other. Here’s a crappy diagram:
========Oven=Oven
Warmer=Preptable=Cut Table
Our “alley” is barely large enough for two grown men to get by.
On busy nights, we have one guy on the server side of the cut-table. His job is to manage all the tickets and tell the others what to do. He also expedites the food. We call him the wheel. This is usually me or our KM. We only use a wheel when we are very busy and it’s usually only for 3-4 hours.
On the other side of the cut table is the “oven guy” whose sole job is to pull pizzas and cut them as well as to notify the wheel so that food can be staged properly. That leaves two people on the line to make pizzas and occasionally three. Our make table is big enough that each of the two cooks can have their own station of sauce/cheese/basic meats. They share the vegetables in the middle.
Taking the tickets out of the cooks hands seems to make them much faster - they can just focus on the one individual task at hand. They are trained to look up when done and holler “next pizza” and are not worried about timing or staging at all.
This works pretty efficiently for us, but I’m considering moving to a more “assembly” line style system. Frankly, I’m having a hard time stepping back and looking at my own operation b/c we’ve done it this way for so long. So any fresh ideas or descriptions of how you guys do it would be helpful. On a busy night, we sell about 140 pizzas if that helps.
Thanks for your thoughts in advance.
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We serve about 2:1 thin:chicago. We don’t really cook much else in the ovens (we toast some sandwiches and cook cheesebread, but that’s about it). We also sell appetizers, wings, pasta, and sandwiches. Usually, the pizza cook at that end of the line handles all those orders (our food business is 85% pizza +/-)