THE BRIGADE PT II The Brigade de Cuisine

THE BRIGADE PT II The Brigade de Cuisine, Now

In today’s commercial kitchens, cost is king. In chain restaurants, dishes are created in the corporate kitchen and prepared by the kitchen staff In hotels and office parks across the United States, meals are prepared by cooks according to specifications that reduce customer satisfaction to numbers and statistics

In today’s commercial kitchens, cost is king. In small, independent restaurants, many owners use ready-made or flash-frozen products as they try to balance price and quality.

All of these are examples of cost-savings measures. What they have in common is the Kitchen Staff. Even if they are using pre-fab foods, a form of the Brigade is in place. It is the rare restaurant, indeed, whose kitchen staff prepares everything from scratch. If you have the chance to work in one of these kitchens, I strongly recommend it. You’ll increase your skills many fold.

Increasing your skillset also increases your value as a paid employee. The pay rate for cooks is somewhat erratic and taking into account the fact that kitchens tend to be small crowded spaces, skills are what basically have to offer in order to be successful.

Restaurants do well in areas where a lot of people come. Most of those places are high-rent districts. As a result, it costs a lot per square foot just to lease the space. Factor in the exorbitant cost of a liquor license (the real money maker in a restaurant) and décor and entertainment that make people want to come back.

This is what makes running a restaurant an expensive proposition.

With these factors in mind, an owner or chef has to keep labor cost under control. The chef has to staff the kitchen for efficiency The staff has to have training and the skills inorder to prepare the menu The menu has to appeal to the customers in order to have guest satisfaction and repeat business

1. The size of the dining room has to maximized for the simple fact of square feet equals dollar signs 2. A restaurant owner is going to need to get as many people inside the doors as possible in order to generate revenue 3. Customers have to be fed in a reasonable amount of time, the table cleaned and reset for another group of customers as soon as possible

Giving space over to the kitchen is not a money maker and is seen by many restaurant owners as a waste of opportunity to turn a profit. As a result, modern kitchen has been pared down to the bare essentials when it comes to space and how to efficiently use a chef’s labor to turn dining room space into dollars.

Even modern Show Kitchen are design for a “Look” and not to offer chefs elbow room.

The Cost of Labor As far as labor cost is concerned, experienced chefs and cooks make a lot more than servers do, who work largely for tips.

This means that the largest chunk of a restaurant owner’s labor budget goes to paying the cooks. So the result: 1. The kitchens are small, cramped spaces tucked into the back of the building 2. Owners hire fewer people to do the cooking. 3. The expectation is that a Chef should be able to train the staff or the staff already has the skills needed to cook effectively

Back before the 1940’s, in classic Brigade kitchen, five or six chefs would create food now put out by one or two chefs

As a matter of fact, depending on the restaurant and the type of food they serve, there may only be three or four people cooking on a weeknight. Even for a busy weekend service, there may only be four or five people producing food for 250 -300 customers

The brigade system was instituted by Escoffier to streamline and simplify work in hotel kitchens. In smaller operations, the classic system is generally abbreviated and responsibilities are organized so as to make the best use of workspace and talents.

By our standards today, Escoffier’s kitchen of “Scientific Efficiency” would seem like it was over staffed. The reason being that labor was still cheap, things had to be prepared from scratch, and there was no refrigeration.

It seems strange to us today, but the lack of refrigeration put a huge obstacle in the way of “Scientific Efficiency”. Food still was unable to be prepared and stored for more than a day or two, Massive amounts of plates for salads and desserts had to be prepared “a la minute” or to the exact moment it was needed by as many hands could be spared.

Also in our Modern Kitchen, a shortage of skilled personnel has also made it necessary to modify the brigade system. The introduction of new equipment has helped to alleviate some of the problems associated with smaller kitchen staffs. Rather than having six chefs preparing plates to come off the service line for one station, it’s now possible to send out twenty to thirty plates with only two cooks.

The Chef: In today’s independently owned and operated restaurants, everything is streamlined, cost-conscious designed for the modern kitchen, Responsible for all kitchen operations, including ordering, supervision of all stations, and development of menu items. He or she also may be known as the chef de cuisine or executive chef.

The Sous Chef Second in command, answers to the chef, may be responsible for scheduling, fills in for the chef, and assists the station chefs (or line cooks) as necessary. Small operations may not have a sous chef. The range of positions in a classic brigade also include the following:

Sauté Chef (Saucier): Responsible for all sautéed items and their sauces. This position is often considered the most demanding, responsible, and glamorous on the line.

Fish Chef (Poissonier) Responsible for fish items, often including fish butchering, and their sauces. This position is sometimes combined with the saucier position. Grill Chef (Grillardin) Responsible for all grilled foods.

Cold Chef (Garde Mange) Responsible for all cold preparations, salads, and in some kitchens, soups and sandwiches