Part of the Kitchen Lead track. Lesson 7 of 10.
Where in the shift: at every boundary.
Prerequisites: Modules 1, 44, 45.
The sequence
Name every handoff.
Assign each one.
Watch the boundary after any change.
And close the loop at the end of the shift.
The decisions
Which handoffs exist. Most kitchens have never listed them, and the exercise usually reveals two or three owned by nobody.
Pit to line. Prep to line. Line to pass. Pass to floor. Shift to shift.
And the pit-to-line join specifically, per Module 1 — when slicing starts, who checks the hold, what happens if the room fills early. In a room where one person owns both, that coordination is the whole job and nobody has written it down.
Whether a verbal assignment took. This is the part people skip.
An assignment accepted and not actually taken looks exactly like a fix. Watch the boundary for three consecutive tickets before concluding anything.
What you are reading
Where product sits finished. The failure with no voice — the cooks consider it done and the servers have not seen it.
And whether the boundary behaves differently after an assignment.
What goes wrong here
The unowned handoff. Plates sitting, ticket times normal, nobody late, nobody complaining.
A habit that left with a person. The handoff was never formally assigned; it was covered by habit, and the habit went with a schedule change.
And an assignment made and not verified.
Verification
Stand where you can see the boundary for ten tickets and time how long a finished plate waits. The number settles it.
The boundary
None specific.