Keeping a Well-Organized Kitchen

Keeping a Well-Organized Kitchen

Organization is essential for the home and restaurant alike. While organization within a home kitchen can certainly impact one’s happiness, the fact of the matter is that organization in a commercial kitchen holds even more importance. With impacts on employee safety, workplace efficiency, and food safety in general, an organized commercial kitchen should top the list of priorities for designers and restaurant managers alike.

While an organized kitchen in the home is important for families, an organized kitchen in the restaurant world is critical for the employees as well as the customers. Many more people depend on an organized kitchen in the restaurant world than in the home. If a commercial kitchen is not organized in an effective way, everybody suffers. Organization in the back-of-house operations  helps everybody to be more familiar with the kitchen, and therefore, helps everybody to work faster and more efficiently. In the long run, an organized kitchen will most likely help restaurants and businesses to profit and succeed over time due to increased workplace efficiency and quicker turnaround times for tasks.

Here are a few helpful tips for keeping a well-organized kitchen:

  1. Invest in Storage Containers. Take everything out of its original package, and transfer it to the appropriate type of kitchen storage container. This can come in handy when purchasing in bulk, as you’re likely to use only a portion of a bulk purchase at a time. To make things easier, similar products should be in similar containers, making everything easier to fit, stack, and store. Additionally, by investing in the same types of containers, everything looks much more neat and organized.

  2. Utilize a Variety of Storage Equipment. Other storage devices such as lazy susans for spices, and pull-out cabinet drawers for pots and pans or tupperware, can also help with overall kitchen organization. Seriously, is there anything worse than an unorganized tupperware cabinet that spills out every time you open it?

  3. Assign a Place for Everything. Have designated places in your pantry, cabinets, drawers, shelves, refrigerator, and freezer for everything in your kitchen, and make sure that the staff are well-trained on these general locations from the get-go. This way, nothing should get mixed up, lost or left out to spoil. In commercial kitchens, having a specific spot for everything in your kitchen helps to make things run faster and more efficiently, especially in terms of cooking, cleaning, and even serving. As you can imagine, this would then help the restaurant to benefit in terms of profit, reviews, etc.

  4. Label, label, label! From food containers to locations on the pantry shelf, every piece of kitchen storage and every storage location in your kitchen should be labeled. This makes it substantially easier to find things quickly, and similarly easier to put things away. This can be done with a label maker, sticker labels, small pieces of chalkboard, or even sticky notes. Include spoilage dates or purchase dates for food safety purposes as well. Don’t be afraid to get creative! As long as it is labeled, you’re on the right track to an organized kitchen.

At the end of the day, the benefits of an organized kitchen can be felt from back-of-house to front-of-house. Your employees and customers alike can benefit from a kitchen that is conducive to a smooth, organized work environment!



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