Sample result
Operating Manual Architect by Area for Restaurants
The owner asked this:«Kitchen food cost went from 32 to 38 in four months and nobody can tell me where. Everyone says their part is fine. I need to put the kitchen area in order once and for all: who signs what, what gets recorded, and where the money is going.»
① The kitchen journey map
Six stages, from the truck to the plate. The typical time is what it takes today, not what it should.
| # | Stage | What comes in | What leaves | Signing role | Typical time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Goods receiving | Supplier truck + invoice | Weighed and accepted goods | Storekeeper | 25 min |
| 2 | Storage | Accepted goods | Labelled goods in their cold room | Storekeeper | 15 min |
| 3 | Prep | Goods | Portioned mise en place | Head chef | 120 min |
| 4 | Production | Mise en place + ticket | Finished plate | Line cook | 8–18 min |
| 5 | The pass | Finished plate | Checked and handed-off plate | Head chef | 40 sec |
| 6 | Close and waste | Day's leftovers | Weighed and logged waste | Head chef | 20 min |
Map finding: between stage 2 and stage 3 there is no signature. Goods enter the cold room with an owner and leave for the board without one — and that is exactly the stretch where the weight goes missing.
② The control points and what they cost
Four points. The right-hand column is the one that reorders the conversation.
| Point | Standard | Tolerance | Who measures | How often | Lost per month if it drifts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receiving | Weight against invoice; protein below 4 °C | 2 % by weight | Storekeeper | Every delivery | ~1.8 M COP (1.8 % of goods cost) |
| Portioning | 180 g protein per portion | ±10 g | Head chef | 5 random portions/day | ~2.4 M COP (2.4 food-cost points) |
| The pass | Leaves above 63 °C, with its side | 0 incomplete plates | Head chef | Every plate | Returns + waste |
| Closing waste | Below 3 % of weekly cost | 3.5 % | Head chef | Daily | ~0.9 M COP |
Illustrative figures on 100 M COP monthly sales and a 34 % food-cost target. The six points food cost drifted fit almost entirely into the first two rows: weight nobody controls and portion size nobody measures.
③ Boundaries: what is not kitchen's and what nobody signs
| What looks like kitchen's | Who actually signs it | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Price negotiation with the supplier | Purchasing | The kitchen receives, it does not negotiate; blaming it for the price blames it for someone else's decision |
| Deciding which dish leaves the menu | Management with menu engineering | The kitchen reports cost and time, it does not decide the sales mix |
| Cost of front-of-house waste | Service | A plate returned over a ticket error is not kitchen waste |
The two gaps nobody signs today — and this is the finding of the exercise:
- The cold-room-to-board handover (stages 2→3): nobody weighs what leaves the cold room, so the difference between what was received and what was portioned exists on no paper.
- Perishable rotation: nobody owns first-in-first-out, and the waste it creates is logged as «expired product» with no cause.
The full example has 2 more part(s): you see them inside the library, with your account.