How to Develop Good Line Cooks
Do you want to know to develop good line cooks? Do you want to stop paying a line cook that doesn’t even want to work and isn’t a team player? Are you tired of line cook issues in your restaurant? Watch this video to learn how to develop a good line cook while also decreasing your labor cost and becoming more efficient in the kitchen.
This idea actually comes from a member here at Restaurant Systems Pro. They’ve been doing it for years and it’s brilliant.
When you hire your line cook, start them out at your lowest level station, pay them a minimum starting salary such as $12/hour, train them and then certify them. In this case, let’s call that station the fry station. As soon as that fry cook excels and is “certified,” start teaching them a new station – in this case it can be a salad station or cold station. Train them and then certify them in it and give them a bump in pay, such as 25 cents or whatever you can afford. The point is you are giving them a bump in pay.
After two stations have been certified, move that line cook over to station after station, for however many stations you have, training and certifying them each time with a bump in pay.
Next thing that line cook knows he or she is making more money and feels confident about their abilities to work in the kitchen.
This might seem to you like this solution increases your restaurant labor cost, but it’s actually the exact opposite. Now on a slower day you have someone who can work multiple stations. So instead of having multiple cooks on the clock working individual stations, you have one cook who can be efficient on multiple stations and save you money. On a slow day or night, I can cut someone and have the confidence the kitchen will be covered because the people left on the line can do multiple stations.
You get more efficient because those line cooks become more valuable, as they are full trained and certified in every position.
Use this idea to decrease labor cost and develop good line cooks.
For more information about training and the impact it can have on your restaurant’s bottom line, read our free special report, Breaking Away from the Insanity: How to easily take control of your restaurant and make more money. Download it here.
