Summing It Up
• There is some debate among design experts on whether a la carte and banquet operations should be in separate kitchens or just be separate lines; the answer depends on which option a facility prefers or can afford. • A small kitchen doesn’t have to be an inefficient one. |
Experts agree that taking control of the kitchen now means splitting banquet and a la carte service-even if they are in the same kitchen.
The easiest way to ensure that banquets and a la carte service thrive simultaneously in a club is to provide breathing room for each in the back of the house. One way to do that is to place each operation in its own kitchen. Another popular option is to separate the functions into different lines in one kitchen. And barring that, sometimes you just have to make it all work with whatever limited space you might have.
One kitchen expert firmly believes that a la carte and banquet service can’t be handled in the same kitchen. “A lot of times, club members and [directors or owners] hear about the idea of separating the functions, and think it’s only going to create more labor requirements and make things more difficult to maintain,” he says. “But actually, separating the two gives each of them much more operational strength, because you’re not trying to do them both simultaneously. And in fact, in many of the clubs we go into, that’s exactly why we’re redesigning them.”
And if cost or space make it prohibitive to have two full-sized kitchens, he adds, the answer is often to have an autonomous satellite kitchen.
Far-flung Operations
The sprawling, 116-year-old Maidstone Club in East Hampton, N.Y., has three working kitchens, two of which are located in the 37,000-sq.-ft. clubhouse. The main kitchen handles a la carte dinner service and occasional banquets; another, on the second floor, handles lunch and more banquets.
Because the first-floor kitchen serves the main dining room on the second floor, there is a lot of elevator traffic, not to mention a logistical challenge. This concern will be addressed over the next five years, as the club moves forward with plans to renovate all of its kitchens, including a tennis operation a mile away that buses in food from the main kitchen for about 40 events a year.
The final kitchen, and the real gem of Maidstone, is the cafeteria and snack bar kitchen at the property’s Beach Club. During the summer months, the Beach Club brings in around $2.3 million in revenue by serving anywhere between 300 and 700 lunches a day. “I don’t know of any club with a beach operation that does that kind of volume,” says Ken Koch, Maidstone’s new General Manager, who spent the last eight years at the Country Club of Darien in Connecticut.
The cafeteria, while divided into stations that diners approach with trays, is more reminiscent of an upscale corporate cafeteria than anything members would remember from high school. After picking up their trays, members first pass a deli case filled with prepared platters of items, such as sliced roast beef and asparagus. Then they move on to a raw bar. For many people, the highlight of the cafeteria is the chef’s table—a salad bar where three cooks work on the spot to prepare freshly chopped salads to members’ specifications. Finally, diners pick up beverages and pass through a point-of-sale station. An attached ice cream parlor serves up dessert.
On the other side of the Beach Club is a snack bar that serves more traditional, concession-type items, like hamburgers, hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches. Trays are still used and most of the items are made fresh. The snack bar kitchen is slated for an overhaul this fall, as part of a larger renovation plan focusing on Maidstone’s kitchens. Right now, the layout is such that the customers see the back of the cooking line and the food must be passed over the top as it is finished. That will be flipped through the overhaul, to eliminate this barrier between the cooks and their customers.
Paris-trained Ian Scollay, the club’s Executive Chef who “inherited three dated kitchens,” is looking forward to the coming renovations. “I’m from a European restaurant and hotel background,” he says. “This is my first experience in the club world, so I do things a little differently than a lot of club chefs.”
At the top of his list is refocusing the club’s food and beverage service toward more a la minute cooking, rather than holding items in steam tables, which he will remove and replace with more customized chef’s tables that have built-in refrigeration and more space for plating.
In addition, Chef Scollay is planning for new ovens, ranges and griddles, and hopefully a turbo chiller and new walk-in refrigerators.
Shared Space
Nashville’s Hillwood Country Club is working out of a more recently renovated kitchen that follows a different model. Depending on whom you ask, this club’s layout could either be described as two separate kitchens—one banquet and one a la carte—that happen to share a space, or as one large kitchen with two lines. Regardless, the design is much more compact than that of the Maidstone Club.
According to one club design firm, the ideal kitchen layout should have back-to-back lines in the same space. And while there might be differences in the final equipment list, generally larger-scale production equipment goes on the banquet side, along with room for plating. When no banquet is taking place, that side of the kitchen doesn’t have to be fired up, but it can still be used for prep.
Many times it’s helpful to use the larger equipment, like steam kettles, for making stocks and soups. And, if that equipment is in the same kitchen, albeit on a different line, it will be used more often than if it were out of sight across the building.
Since Hillwood CC finished its renovation in 2000, annual food and beverage revenues climbed from $1.2 to $3.2 million. Prior to the renovation, everything came off one line and there were traffic jams, as cooks and waiters frequently crossed paths and tried to work in too-close quarters.
“We set up the facility to work with us, as opposed to against us,” says Wally Smith, Hillwood’s General Manager.
Executive Chef Perry Seal agrees. “The setup has been working very well,” he says. “We got to personally design the kitchen.”
The club runs two restaurants—one for adult-only fine dining and another that is family-oriented—off the a la carte line. Then there’s the banquet line, which services seven banquet rooms and can easily handle four courses for up to 250 people. Both of the lines work from shared walk-in refrigerators and freezers.
Hillwood does have two other autonomous satellite kitchens. A small, one-man operation handles the men’s grille called the Jackson Room. That kitchen also has a window, through which golfers are served at the turn. The menu there is geared toward sandwiches and fried items, so the kitchen has a fryolator, griddle, four-burner stove, grill, tabletop sandwich unit, meat drawers under the line, and its own refrigeration.
The poolside Canteen is the other satellite kitchen, serving “short-order food that’s brought up a notch” according to Chef Seal. Because he maintains a teaching atmosphere at the club, he will set up the kitchen at the beginning of the season and then turn loose a cook and a culinary student intern, who has been charged with creating a business plan for the Canteen. High school students are hired to work as interns under the cook, and the kitchen is run as a self-sufficient unit (beyond having to pick up deliveries from the main kitchen).
Making it Work
One major benefit to having banquet and a la carte lines run from a single, divided kitchen is that the chef can keep a close eye on operations. Ideally, his or her office would have a view of the entire kitchen, as well as the refrigeration and storage areas. Not only does this let the chef keep a closer eye on food quality, it also keeps horseplay to a minimum, and prevents pilfering.
Chef Michael Gregory of Park City Club—a 17,000-sq.-ft. club located in a high-rise office building in Dallas—is no stranger to the idea of keeping a close watch on his kitchen. Despite having only a single, 1,600-sq.-ft. kitchen from which to run all of the club’s operations, he’s managed to be very successful running on one line. His staff prepares almost 10,000 meals per month and brings in $3 million in food and beverage revenues annually. By comparison, another Dallas area club that Chef Gregory declined to name has 6,500-sq.-ft of kitchen space and seven walk-in coolers to work with, but does less volume.
“It’s almost like working in very small cubicles,” says Michael Davis, the club’s General Manager. In fact, the kitchen has an unusually good safety record, because there isn’t room to run (or trip) in the limited space.
Park City Club’s operation should serve as an inspiration to any club that has no room to expand, or is years (or dollars) away from renovation. To make it work, Chef Gregory plans carefully, so banquets are prepped before the line is needed for a la carte service. Dishes are prepared ahead of time, held in three roll-in refrigerators, and then finished in ovens to the extent possible. His tenured staff—70 percent of his 75 employees has been at the club at least five years—help to keep everything running smoothly.
His limited space also means that Chef Gregory takes deliveries frequently—as many as eight to 10 a week. “It’s a curse and a blessing [to use the same walk-in cooler for everything],” he says. “It’s a curse because during busy times, there isn’t enough space. But during regular business, it’s actually a blessing, because we’re able to rotate the stock quite frequently and keep fresh stock by having multiple deliveries daily.”
If he had his “dream kitchen,” Chef Gregory would still operate from a single kitchen, but divide banquet and a la carte into separate lines. He would also add an in-house pastry shop, an employee cafeteria and locker room with showers, and a hot line with under-counter refrigeration that is organized so one chef could easily reach key equipment when working a slow shift, but still have room for multiple chefs to work side-by-side during a busy shift.
But for now, his “dream kitchen” will remain just that: in his dreams. He has no plans to leave Park City Club, and the club has no current plans for a major overhaul.
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