The Basis of Kitchen Organization

Appears in
Professional Cooking: 10th Edition
Professional Cooking

By Wayne Gisslen

Published 2025

  • About
The purpose of kitchen organization is to assign or allocate tasks so they can be done efficiently and properly and so all workers know what their responsibilities are.
The way a kitchen is organized depends on several factors:

  1. The menu.

    The kinds of dishes to be produced obviously determine the jobs that must be done. The menu is, in fact, the basis of the entire operation. Because of its importance, we devote a major section of Chapter 4 to a study of the menu.

  2. The type of establishment.

    The major types of food-service establishments are as follows:

    • Hotels
    • Institutional kitchens
      • Schools
      • Hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care institutions
      • Retirement communities and assisted living facilities
      • Employee lunchrooms and executive dining rooms
      • Airline catering
      • Military food service
      • Correctional institutions
    • Private clubs
    • Catering and banquet services
    • Fast-food restaurants
    • Carry-out or take-out food facilities, including supermarkets
    • Food trucks
    • Full-service restaurants
    • Private homes (personal chefs)

  3. The size of the operation (the number of customers and the volume of food served).
  4. The physical facilities, including the equipment in use.