Part of the Kitchen Lead track. Lesson 1 of 10.
Where in the shift: ten minutes before it starts, and it decides most of the night.
Prerequisites: Modules 1, 42, 50.
The sequence
Check the night type and the advance count.
Walk the stations.
Name the assignments out loud — who holds the pass, who owns the rail, who owns the reset.
State the non-negotiables.
And say what is short, what changed, and what is on a clock.
The decisions
What to name. This is the lesson.
The non-negotiable controls have to be stated at pre-shift, per Module 1 — because the unnamed ones are the ones that go under pressure. A cook who has not been told which controls do not bend will make a reasonable guess when the rail is deep, and the guess will not match anyone's intention.
Who holds the pass. One person, said out loud, before it is needed. Negotiating it during a rush is the failure, and in a kitchen with two senior people it produces conflicting direction and a cook stopping mid-task to work out whose call to follow.
Who owns the rail. The most commonly unowned handoff in a small kitchen, per Module 1 — and the one whose failure has no voice, because the cooks consider the plate finished and the servers have not seen it.
And whether to simplify tonight, in advance. A menu cut by choice at pre-shift is a decision. The same cut at nine is a scramble.
What you are reading
The night type against the prep. Does what is in the walk-in match what the night needs?
The stations' setup, per the Line track's Lesson 1 — set to the night or to a standard?
And the room's own information — the set list, the door time, the act's draw.
What goes wrong here
Pre-shift skipped because everyone knows what to do. Which is true on a Tuesday and false on a Saturday.
Assignments assumed. The rail owned by nobody.
And the non-negotiables unnamed, which means they are the first things dropped.
Verification
Ask a cook mid-service who owns the rail. If the answer varies, it was not assigned.
And ask what was said at pre-shift. If nobody can repeat it, it was not a pre-shift.
The boundary
Employment and supervisory matters belong with a licensed attorney.