The first calendar we made was the EOM / Payday. We printed a copy, which should look something like the following image. Make sure you build these calendars on a business account and that the cloud storage is also a secured business account.

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As a chef, kitchen manager, or owner, it is easy to get caught up in many moments. Suddenly, we need to catch up, are stressed, make poor decisions, and are generally frazzled. We need time to do our work. We will add weekly ADMIN tasks to the EOM / Payday calendar. Remember, we are using 90-minute time blocks. The time you need to allocate to the tasks will vary. Your business volume, order schedules, staff size, and facility will all have an effect.  Below is an example of an admin schedule for a small pub kitchen.

Example: ADMIN Schedule

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
Inventory Counts:	Purchase Orders:	Office Updates:	Purchase Orders:	Purchase Orders:	Purchase Orders:	Offsite Tasks:
3-Hours Month	Main Purveyors	Guides / Schedules	Secondary Purveyors	Main Purveyors	Secondary Purveyors	Wholesale Clubs
	Supply Purveyors	Invoice Processing	Meetings:		Weekly Meetings	Specialty Markets
All / Menu Planning	Price Comparisons	Inventory Reconcile	Monthly Meetings
90-Minutes Week	3-Hours Week	3-Hours Week	90-Minutes Week	90-Minutes Week	90-Minutes Week	3-Hours Weekend

Example: ADMIN Tasks

• Purchases (Daily / Weekly)
• Office work

• Price comparisons
• Schedules
• Update guides / books
• Invoice / Inventory processing
• Printing weekly sheets
• Offsite tasks (specialty markets, wholesale clubs)
• Stock counts
• Inspections

• Weekly meetings
• Monthly meeting
• Inventory (Monthly)

This breaks down to 12-15 hours a week. That may seem like a lot of time you cannot afford to spend. I’m going to tell you that it is this time that you NEED to spend. I have seen many people circling because they need time to organize themselves. Think of a line cook with a poorly set-up station. They can perform their job, but they are inefficient.

Most of these tasks will be time-sensitive and recurring. Please put them in your calendar as such. For example, if you place your purchase order every Tuesday at 10 AM, block it out in your calendar. Adjust the alerts to suit how you will be notified, if at all. You don’t need an extra alert in your day. 

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You cannot run your business or kitchen properly if you are physically and mentally exhausted. The fourth calendar we will set up is for Self / Health. Title it and color code it Purple.

On this calendar, you will set up the days you spend with family and friends, your vacation time, your exercise or hobby time, and events you plan to attend, such as concerts, sporting events, and date nights. Anything and everything you want time for in your personal life should go on here. This time should become virtually non-negotiable.

Having the events calendar available when you set up the Self / Health calendar would be best. You are going to run into conflicts between these that should be resolved. If there is a festival at a nearby venue, that may increase volume, and it’s your friend’s wedding. You pick the wedding. If there’s a monthly summer market that brings in extra business, but it’s your bowling night. Maybe you are missing bowling once a month during the summer. It would be best if you found that balance for yourself. We will go over this more later.

We must incorporate our employees’ time into the mix for the fifth calendar. We will create a Staff calendar, title it, and code it Orange. Since people’s lives can change frequently, you should have your employees update their availability forms and ask them to give you concrete time blocks for vacation time.

How you handle vacation time is entirely up to you and what your business can tolerate. As an operator, it is fair that you have some periods where you do not accept time off requests. Establish those restrictions. You may offer incentives to take time off during a different part of the year. Whatever manner you want to approach vacations, get staff involved and on the calendar.

This calendar should also include hire anniversary dates. Set these up as recurring and put the hire year in the event title (Last Name, First 2020). This calendar should also include the employees’ review dates. You may want to put birthdays into a Reminder App. I wouldn’t put birthdays on this calendar if it’s public.

We now have five calendars filled out.

1. The EOM / Payday / Admin calendar is coded green.
2. The Maintenance calendar is coded red.
3. The Events calendar is coded blue.
4. The Self / Health calendar is coded purple.
5. The Staff calendar is coded orange.

We must turn them into a document we can quickly reference for guidance. The document should be broken down by month, contain event dates and menu summaries, and be forward-looking. We should be thinking about 6-8 weeks ahead. This will give us time to prepare menus, social media content, and advertising and give us lead time for special purchases.

The Self / Health and Staff events will only be on this document if they impact the entire business.

Example Summary:

Our final sheet will look something like that. It should be kept near your desk, and a copy should be near the staff schedule. It is essential to keep the staff involved in many aspects of the business and aware of what is coming soon. This is an opportunity to give your employees some insight into the business operations. Share the crucial business dates calendar with them. They will see that there is more to operating than opening the doors.

Pick your Task Manager, To-Do App, or Reminder App. Set yourself a weekly recurring task to empty junk email or unsubscribe from a mailing. You should try several apps and methods to find what works for you. Please look at a  Read-it-Later App as well. One that can take email subscriptions out of your inbox is helpful.

The next post will be a Quick Start Guide. It will summarize everything into one post and introduce the structure we need in The Kitchen System Command folder.

Thank you for your time. Lead a balanced life.

Matthew Moyer – The Kitchen System Blog @ kitchensystem.org