The prep list that ends the morning guesswork

Most kitchens start the day the same way. Someone arrives, looks at the walk-in, looks at yesterday's prep list, and starts making roughly what they made yesterday. On a night that turns out like yesterday, it works. On a night that is twice as busy, the line runs out of a sauce at half past eight. On a night that is half as busy, a tray of prepared vegetables and a pan of sauce go in the bin at close. The prep list was a guess, and the guess was only right by coincidence.

A good prep list removes the guess. It starts from what the night is likely to bring, works out what each section needs to have ready, compares that with what is already prepared, and gives each cook a clear list of what to make, in what order, in what quantity. It is the single most useful document a kitchen produces each morning, and in many kitchens it barely exists.

This guide explains how to build a prep list from a forecast rather than from habit. It covers prep pars per cover, how to read the night ahead, how to turn the list into a kitchen production plan with a sensible order, how to size batches, how to account for prep labour, and who should own the list at eight in the morning.

A prep list is the plan for everything that must be prepared before and during service: sauces, stocks, dressings, chopped and portioned produce, portioned proteins, garnishes, baked items and anything else the line needs ready to cook or plate. It sits between the menu and the service. The menu says what guests can order. The prep list says what must exist so that the line can make it quickly.

The idea of having everything in its place before cooking starts is old and central to professional kitchens, usually known by its French name, mise en place. A prep list is mise en place written down, quantified and assigned, so that it does not depend on any one cook's memory or mood.

A copied prep list fails for three reasons.

It ignores the night ahead. Covers vary enormously from day to day, and a list that does not change with them will always be wrong in one direction or the other.

It ignores what is already there. A list that says "make two litres of sauce" without checking that one and a half litres are already in the walk-in makes three and a half litres of sauce, most of which will not be used before its date.

It ignores the menu mix. If a dish has become popular this week, its components need more prep than they did last month, and a copied list will not know.

The cost of these failures shows up as waste on quiet nights and as running out on busy ones, and both are expensive. Our guide on how to reduce food waste in a restaurant kitchen shows how much waste comes from over-production in particular.

The first step is to know how many guests the kitchen is likely to feed, service by service. In a restaurant that takes bookings, the diary already holds most of the answer: the number of covers booked for each service, the size of each party, and any private events. Add an allowance for walk-ins, taken from the same day of the week over the last few weeks, and you have a forecast.

To prep from forecast in this way does not require precision. A forecast that is right to within ten or fifteen percent is far better than a copied list that ignores the night entirely. The aim is to move the prep list in the right direction, by roughly the right amount, every day.

A prep par is the quantity of a prepared item needed for a given number of covers. It is worked out from how much of each item the kitchen actually uses.

Take a sauce that goes on two dishes. If, over the last few weeks, the kitchen served those two dishes to about one guest in five, and each portion uses 60 millilitres of sauce, then the sauce needs roughly 12 millilitres per cover. For 120 forecast covers, that is about 1.4 litres, plus a small buffer. That number, not yesterday's habit, is what goes on the list.

Prep pars can be expressed per cover, as in the example, or per service for items that do not vary much. For each prepared item, record its par, its shelf life and the dishes it supports. Our guide to par levels explains the same idea applied to ordering.

Before writing quantities, check the walk-in and the line. For each prepared item, note what is already there and still within its safe life. The amount to make is the par for tonight minus what is on hand, rounded to a sensible batch size.

This check also catches items close to their date, which should be used first or replaced. A prep list that includes a "use first" column, listing items that must be used today, stops perfectly good prepared food from being forgotten behind a fresh batch of the same thing.

A prep list is easiest to use when it is grouped by station, so each cook can see their own jobs at a glance. For each station, list the items with these columns:

Keep the list on one page per station if possible, and post it where the station works. A list that has to be fetched from the office will not be read.

A list of tasks is not yet a plan. The kitchen production plan puts those tasks in order, so that long jobs start early, shared equipment is not double-booked, and the most important items are ready first.

Order the tasks by three things. First, lead time: stocks, braises, doughs and anything that needs time to cook, chill or rest go first. Second, dependency: a sauce that is a component of three dishes is made before the dishes that need it. Third, risk: the items that would stop service if they ran out are done before the items that are merely nice to have. A simple timeline, with the oven, the stove and the mixer each assigned by hour, prevents the late-morning traffic jam where four cooks need the same piece of equipment at once.

Batch sizes should follow the forecast, not the size of the pan. If a sauce has always been made in a five-litre batch because that is the size of the pot, on a quiet night most of it will be wasted. Where an item holds poorly, make a smaller batch for the first part of service and plan a top-up once you can see how the night is going.

That second wave is one of the most effective habits a kitchen can adopt. It costs a little more coordination and a few more minutes of a cook's time, and it removes most of the end-of-night waste on items that do not keep.

Every task needs a name beside it. A list that says what to make without saying who makes it is a list that relies on everyone assuming someone else will do it. Assign tasks at the start of the shift, and have each cook tick off tasks as they finish them. Before service, the person who owns the list walks each station and confirms that everything on the list is done and that nothing is missing.

A prep list says how much to make. A standard recipe card says how to make it, consistently, whoever is cooking. Every prepared item on the list should have a card with its ingredients, quantities, method, yield, shelf life and storage, and any allergens. When a new cook is on the list, the card is what lets them make the sauce the same way the regular cook does. Our guide to recipe costing covers the costing side of the same card.

Link the prep list to the cards. If the list says "mustard sauce, 2 litres", the card for mustard sauce should tell anyone how to make exactly two litres of it, with the right yield and the right labelling.

Every task on the prep list costs time, and time is the kitchen's most limited resource before service. Time your regular prep tasks once: how long it takes a competent cook to make a batch of each sauce, to portion a case of protein, to prepare a tray of vegetables. Add those times to the list, and you can see at a glance whether the morning's prep fits the people on the rota.

When prep labour regularly exceeds the time available, there are only a few options: start earlier, add a prep cook, simplify the menu, or buy in components that take the most time to make. Knowing the times makes that decision a matter of arithmetic rather than a feeling that the kitchen is always behind.

Here is an illustrative Thursday for a restaurant forecasting 140 covers across lunch and dinner. The figures are examples to show the method.

Without the forecast, the cook might have made the usual 3 litres of sauce, portioned the usual 20 chickens and prepared a full day of salad at nine in the morning. On a 140-cover Thursday, that would have meant a large share of the morning's prep in the bin at close.

A prep list without an owner drifts back into habit within a week. Give it a clear owner, usually the sous chef or the most senior cook on the morning shift. The owner checks the forecast, adjusts the pars for anything unusual, checks what is on hand, writes the quantities, assigns the tasks and confirms completion before service.

The night before, whoever closes should leave a short note for the owner: what was left at close, what ran out and when, and anything unusual about the next day. That note is often the most valuable input of all, because it records what actually happened rather than what the forecast expected.

The prep list is a forecast, and forecasts are improved by looking at how they went. At close, spend two minutes on each station: what was left over, what ran out, and at what time. Write the answers on the next day's list. Over a few weeks, the prep pars become far more accurate, because they are being corrected against reality every night.

Private events, set menus and holidays break the normal pattern, so plan them separately. A booked party of thirty with a set menu needs its own prep list, built from the menu and the number of guests, added to the normal list for the rest of the service. A holiday weekend may need two or three days of prep compressed into fewer shifts, which means checking shelf life carefully before making anything early.

Kitchens that change their dishes weekly, or cook from the market each morning, sometimes feel a prep list cannot keep up. It can, if it is built from components rather than dishes. Most changing menus still rest on a set of recurring components: a handful of stocks and sauces, a few starches, standard ways of preparing proteins and vegetables. Give each recurring component a prep par per cover, and the prep list for a new dish becomes a matter of adding its new parts to an existing list.

When a dish is brand new, estimate its share of orders from similar dishes and set a cautious par for its first night. Check at close how it actually sold, and adjust the next day. Within two or three services, the new dish's prep settles like the rest.

If you run more than one kitchen, or a central kitchen supplying a venue, the prep list becomes a production order between them. The receiving kitchen works out its needs from its own forecast and sends an order with a cut-off time; the producing kitchen adds up all its orders and plans production from the total. The principle is the same as a single kitchen's list, with one extra rule: record every transfer at both ends, with quantities and dates, so each kitchen's food cost reflects what it actually used.

The prep list depends on knowing how busy the night will be, and much of that knowledge sits in the booking diary. In servearound, the reservations diary shows covers booked for each service, party sizes and private events, which is the starting point for a forecast built on bookings. Covers by day and hour, set against the period before, help you choose the right walk-in allowance for each day.

During service, each dish carries the prep time you set on the menu, and every ticket counts its own time in the kitchen, so you can see where prep shortfalls slow the line. When a prepared item runs out, marking the dish sold out takes it off every menu and terminal at once, so the floor stops selling it immediately. The order fulfillment module covers the kitchen side in detail.

Plan each day's prep the night before or first thing in the morning, using the latest bookings. Items with long lead times, such as stocks, braises or doughs, may need planning a day or two ahead.

It will sometimes be. Prepping in two waves limits the damage in both directions: a busy night is handled by the second wave, a quiet one by not starting it.

Yes. Planning the staff meal from surplus and trim is one of the easiest ways to reduce waste, and putting it on the list makes sure it happens.

Make the list visible, specific and owned. When each task has a quantity and a name beside it, and the owner checks completion before service, the list becomes the plan rather than a suggestion. Share the end-of-night results too: when the team sees that the list stopped a sauce being binned, they tend to trust it.

Some items, such as stocks or cured components, are made in larger batches to last several days. Give them a par that covers their safe life and a clear date label, and add them to the list only on the days they need making, not every day.

A short version helps. If the floor knows that a dish has a limited prep for the night, servers can recommend alternatives before it runs out rather than apologising afterwards. A line at the pre-shift briefing, such as "twelve portions of the lamb tonight, push the fish once we are under four", turns the prep list into a shared plan for the whole service rather than a kitchen document nobody else reads.

Small kitchens benefit most, because one person's absence can leave nobody who knows what to make. A one-page list is enough.

A prep list should start from the forecast, not from yesterday. Know tonight's covers, set prep pars per cover, check what is already prepared, lay the list out by station, turn it into a kitchen production plan with a sensible order, size batches to the night, assign every task, and check it off before service.

Back it with standard recipe cards, time the prep labour, give the list a clear owner, and check at close what was left and what ran out. Within a few weeks, the morning guesswork is gone, and so is most of the end-of-night bin.