I thought my prep list was solid until a Tuesday lunch rush in Austin

We got slammed with a 40 top walk in plus our regulars, and I was short on diced mirepoix for the soup of the day. My sous chef, Marco, had to stop his own station to help me catch up, which threw off the whole line. It taught me to always double my prep estimates for that specific soup on days the convention center is busy. How do you guys adjust your prep for unexpected volume?

3 comments

3 Comments

brooke4842mo ago

That walk-in sounds brutal. Do you have a system for tracking convention center events now, or is it more of a gut check based on the hotel block list?

paul_morgan1mo ago

Oh man, the hotel block list is such a gamble though. I once had a guest show up during a big anime convention I completely missed on my radar, and we were sold out except for a few rooms that were way overpriced even after I begged housekeeping to let us use a blocked-off suite. Now I keep a separate calendar just for the convention center plus all the big sports venues, but I still forget to check it half the time and end up doing the same walk-in scramble. It's like you can have all the systems in the world but when something slips through, you're back to that gut check feeling real fast. That's probably why I still keep a backup list of overflow hotels in my back pocket, just in case.

barbarahill2mo ago

It's like that in a lot of jobs, isn't it? You learn the hard way to always have a buffer for the busy times you can't fully predict.