Kitchen vs. Servers

 I chose Kitchen vs. Servers as the title for this post because I knew it would draw your attention.  If you’re taking the time to read this, you’re probably working in the hospitality industry.  As far back as I can remember there’s always been some kind of animosity between the kitchen staff and the front of house staff.  I’m not going to try and solve that problem for you, but I hope to show you how to think about it a little differently.

I have never been able to figure out how this rivalry started.  Maybe one side did something to the other side during the middle ages and the fight began and is still ongoing today.  Maybe it’s been passed down for generations and generations until we all just thought was part of restaurant life.  Maybe it’s like a dog and cat thing and we’re genetically wired to dislike the other side.  I don’t know, but whatever it is, we can change it and you can help figure out how.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m a retired chef.  I’ve worked in many kitchens all over the place and have seen this rivalry everywhere and even participated in it a few times.  I’ve also worked as a food server and have participated in it from that side of the fence.

I’ll speak to the kitchen side of it first.  If you’re a cook or chef, the whole process of selling food is not all about you.  You play an important part, but not the only part.  You don't sell food.  You are overhead.  Those servers that you constantly harass or demean have to go to the table and convince the customer to order the food and then after it's served and eaten  they have to get money for it.  In essence that’s the function of a restaurant – to buy, prepare, serve and get paid for food.  Your primary role ends when the server takes it to the table.  From there it’s up to them to do everything else.

As a cook or chef, you have to realize that the restaurant owner doesn’t have a magic money tree growing somewhere that he harvests every other Friday to give you a paycheck.  The money for your check comes from the entire process of buying food, cooking food, serving food, and then getting the customer to fork over some money to pay for it.  That money will go toward your paycheck.  In the simplest terms possible this means that if the restaurant can’t collect money from the customer, then you don’t get a paycheck.  It’s a super simple concept when you think about it.  No sales, no paycheck.  The easier it is for the servers to sell, the more money there is.

Where this becomes important is when you think about how all this happens.  You cook the food, but the server takes it to the customer and makes sure he/she’s happy enough to pay for it.  Like it or not, you are dependent on the server for your paycheck.  With that in mind, you can see that anything you do to make their job easier is also good for you.  On the other hand, anything you do to make their life harder is not good for either of you.

Keep this in mind the next time you have the urge to throw a ripping hot dish up under the heat lamps and choose not to warn them that it’s hotter than the Earth’s molten core.  Or when you berate them for making an error on an order.  People make mistakes and making one shouldn’t result in a punishment from the Dark Ages.  Just give them what they need to make the customer happy and then move on.  You can get with them at the end of the shift and straighten out the point-of-sale or discuss what went wrong.  You can work together to figure out how to prevent it from happening again.  After all, it’s not you vs. them.  You’re on the same team.

On the other side of the coin, if you are a server then the kitchen is probably not really out to get you even if it sometimes seems that way.  They’re most likely not even thinking about you, much less plotting against you.  They’ve probably been back there sweating their balls off all day and they’re tired, stressed out, and maybe even a little hungover.  When they get behind they get frustrated just like you.  Help them out a little bit by slowing down service if you can to help them catch up.  They’re not behind because they hate you.  They’re behind because something probably went wrong back there and they’re trying to recover from it.  A good cook’s worst nightmare is to get behind on orders.  Do what you can to help, even if that’s just staying out of the kitchen for a little while to help ease the noise and confusion.

Look, I can write these little pearls of wisdom all day and there are hundreds of them, but you should get the idea by now.  The point of all this is that servers and the kitchen are working for the same thing and fighting among each other holds everyone back.  A little care and cooperation goes a long way toward a successful restaurant and makes for lifelong friendships.  I decided a long time ago that helping the servers whenever I got the chance made my life better too.  And guess what?  The servers started doing the same for me.  When we all started collaborating before, during, and after the shift everyone had fun at work again.  Sales went way up and we all started making more money.  You see, we’re on the same team.