Part of the Kitchen Manager track. Lesson 2 of 10.
Where in the shift: from recorded usage, not from memory.
Prerequisites: Modules 42, 45.
The sequence
Record usage by item for two weeks, tagged by night type.
Build four pars — quiet weeknight, standard weekend, show night, sold-out show.
Size batches to the hold window, not to the shift.
And apply the asymmetry.
The decisions
Four numbers or one. Four, because a Tuesday with forty people and a sold-out Saturday with six hundred are not the same operation.
Where to set each. The asymmetry is the tool, per Module 42.
Long-clock items to the high forecast — brisket, beans, braises hold or sell tomorrow.
Short-clock items to the low one — cut garnish and dressed slaw do not.
That one rule protects both directions at once, and it is the practical version of the whole lesson.
And batch size. Sized to the quality curve rather than to the mixing vessel, per Module 45 — because making it once is easier and making it twice is right.
What you are reading
Recorded usage, not remembered usage.
The hold curves, measured once per product.
And waste by category — trim, spoilage, over-production, plate return — because a single waste number tells nobody anything.
What goes wrong here
Pars set by memory and unchanged for months. They drift slowly enough that no single week looks broken, and then waste and stockouts arrive in the same week.
Batches sized to the shift.
And over-production absorbed rather than logged — consumed as staff meal, repurposed, or discarded at close, appearing nowhere.
Verification
Waste and stockouts in the same week is the diagnostic, per Module 42 — it means the volume is right and the allocation is wrong.
The boundary
None specific.