How the professional kitchen is organized

Today’s professional kitchen is organized into multiple workstations.

A workstation is an area in the kitchen dedicated to a particular task, such as broiling or salad making. Workstations using the same or similar equipment for related tasks are grouped together into a work section. Workstations help keep a kitchen running smoothly. Budget and space are the two major issues in determining the number of workstations. 

In a typical culinary learning kitchen, the space isn’t organized this way – the classroom is organized so that many, many students can cook the same thing at the same time. Not so in a professional kitchen. Whereas in a culinary classroom you may have as many as 6 ovens, the only oven in a professional kitchen would be in the roasting or baking work section.

THE LEAST YOU NEED TO KNOW

KITCHEN BASICS

• What are the major positions in a modern, professional  kitchen? 
• Where did the system come from and who invented it?
• How is the original kitchen brigade different than the modern one?

TERMS

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It is just as important to organize the PEOPLE cooking as to organize the equipment used to actually COOK.

A long time ago, before Escoffier or Carême came along, cooks crammed themselves into the kitchen and everyone tried to do, well… everything. It was a terrible, disorganized, mess. Ever heard the saying too many cooks in the kitchen ruin the meal? Both of these sayings come from the original too many cooks spoil the broth.

A bit of history. Just a bit.

Way back when there were only two classes, the aristocracy and everyone else, the titled elite could afford to spend hours and hours “at table” while a chef prepared course after elaborate course for their culinary pleasure.  They could dawdle about for as many as 6 hours at a time, drink and dally while waiting for their personal chef to finish the next ridiculous entree they had asked for.

Later on, in the middle ages, merchants and craftsmen began to form guilds and eventually became a powerful class in their own right. They had the money to have someone else prepare their food, but they still needed to work. They didn’t have the TIME to sit around waiting for Chef Guston Prissypants to spend 6 hours finishing their Turducken.

Escoffier’s Brigade

Everything changed with the arrival of Georges-Auguste Escoffier, a French chef commonly known as “the king of chefs and the chef of kings” and inventor of the Kitchen Brigade or Brigade de Cuisine.

Escoffier realized if he could pare the time customers sat around “at table,” waiting for their food to be finished, the middle class could work a full day and spend their hard earned money at his restaurant.  To speed things up, Escoffier built a kitchen organizational model on his experience serving in the French army during the Franco-Prussian war, with every cook following a strict chain of command and a separation and delegation of tasks.

In the brigade, every man has a job and there is a job for every man.  Just as in the military, the chain of command is never brooked, and the kitchen is run with extreme precision.

Escoffier’s 20 person kitchen brigade was in use for years and is the basis on which many of the positions of the modern kitchen brigade are founded. While the titles sound fancy, it is important to remember that the entire purpose of the Kitchen Brigade was to speed up the time it took to make people dinner – to do it more effectively and with less labor.

It is hard to believe – but the kitchen system Escoffier created really was the first “Fast Food.”

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The Modern Kitchen Brigade

Over the years, kitchens have changed and positions that used to be more common, such as a chef du poisson – the seafood chef), are less common. As a result, there are fewer people available with those skills. Additionally, there has been an increase in new technology, making the modern kitchen brigade system smaller than it once was.

However, the same sense of chain-of-command, of deference given to the executive chef, of each cook having the chance to work their way up in ability, responsibility, and authority remains.

KITCHEN STAFF	RESPONSIBILITY
Chef	The chef is responsible for all kitchen operations.
Sous chef	Also known as the second chef, the sous chef  is responsible for scheduling personnel and covering the chef’s or station chefs’ work as necessary, accepting orders from the dining room and relaying them to various station chefs, and reviewing the dishes before service.
Station chefs	A station chef produces the menu items under the supervision of the chef or sous chef. Each station chef is assigned a specific task based on either the cooking method and equipment or the category of items to be produced- this also includes line cooks. Station chefs/cooks include the following:Saute station chefBroiler station chefCook ICook IICook Ill
Pastry chef	A pastry chef produces all baked goods, desserts, and pastries.This chemf   ight operate from a separate section of the kitchen or a separate kitchen entirely.
Expediter	The expediter communicates orders, makes sure the food is cooked in the right order and for all parties at the table, and sees that servers run food to the table while it is warm and ready.
Garde Manger	Chef responsible for all cold food preparations, preserved meats, salads, edible centerpieces, and vegetable garnishes (among many other things).

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Dining-Room Brigade System

Like the back-of-the-house staff, the front-of- the-house staff is also organized into a brigade. Escoffier realized there was no point in carefully organizing his cooks for efficiency if he did not ALSO organize the staff serving his guests.

A traditional dining-room brigade is led by the dining-room manager (sometimes known as a maitre d’), who generally trains all service personnel, oversees wine selections, sometimes works with the chef to develop the menu, organizes the seating chart, and seats the guests.

STAFF	RESPONSIBILITY
Wine steward	The wine steward is responsible for the wine service, including purchasing  wines, assisting guests in selecting wines, and serving the wines.
Headwaiter	The headwaiter is responsible for service throughout the dining room or a section of it.
Captain	The captain is responsible for explaining the menu to guests and taking their orders.The captain is also responsible for any table-side preparations.
Front waiter	The front waiter is responsible for assuring that the tables are set properly for each course,food orders are delivered properly to the correct tables, and the needs of the guests are met.
Back waiter	The back waiter is responsible for clearing plates, refilling  water glasses, and other general tasks appropriate for new dining-room workers.

Depending on the nature and size of the restaurant or foodservice operation and the type of service provided, an operation may employ some or all of these positions.

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Wekiva Culinary’s Kitchen Brigade

While commercial restaurants rarely give tokens when their cooks “level up” in experience and skill, at the Magnet Academy of Culinary Arts at Wekiva High School, we do. There are five levels in each category, corresponding to the different skills you must obtain each year in order to progress. The titles are (more or less) taken from Escoffier’s ORIGINAL organizational chart and directly reference what a student chef should KNOW and be able to DO without help.