KITCHEN ORGANIZATION EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT

Introduction tot he Partie System:

Partie is a French word meaning "part ( of a whole) or section." A Partie system is one in which an operation's space equipment, and jobs are divided up into sections. The Partie system for chefs evolved in the Escoffier era from an analysis of the tasks needed for production and then a grouping of those tasks so as to maximize production speed and efficiently. The original system lasted up to the 1930s and was designed primarily for large restaurants, especially those in major hotels providing extensive a la carte and table d'hôte menus in the classic French tradition. As the task ofthe professional kitchen came to involve serving more customers in more and different ways, it organization inevitably became more complex. Highly elaborate dishes required highly specialized experts rather than general chefs who must handle all types of cookery at once.

Modern restaurants and other foodservice systems with quite different styles and sizes of menus cannot adopt the original Partie system in its entirety, but they can apply the same basic principles of organizing to their own production systems. Such a systems analysis approach should take into account the type of menu and style of service desired, the people (staff and customers) involved, and the physical resources (equipment and layout) of the kitchens to be used. It must organize all of these for efficient meal production. The quantity and quality of work skills required will be determined by the menu; the aim is to assign skilled work to the most skilled individuals so that their abilities are fully used. Repetitive jobs, such as those on the grill or griddle, may be broken down into simplified elements and assigned to staff with lesser or no skills. Many jobs may be considered for "deskilling" in this way.

Each type of operation will naturally need its own unique organization for best results. The organizational charts used in this chapter to describe the Partie system are therefore for illustration purposes only. They should not be implemented without extensive revision adapting them to precise actual purposes an needs. Nevertheless, the way in which traditional luxury hotel kitchens originally developed their staffing is worth considering in order to grasp the principles of their approach. Such historical knowledge also gives insight into the various customs of the kitchen that have evolved over the years.

Basic Divisions of Kitchen Work

Even in the earliest times and in the simplest kitchens catering to the public, cooks probably divided the work of preparing and cooking so as to minimize effort. The broad features of a kitchen organization soon began to emerge in divisions such as:

The storage of commodities, both perishable and nonperishableThe preparation of meat, fish, and poultry (larder work)The preparation and cooking of pastries andesserts(the pastry)The preparation of vegetablesThe assembly and cooking of prepared food (the general stove section)In small kitchens today, this basic arrangement can to some extent be contracted

and simplified. As kitchens increase in size and volume of work, this basic arrangement can be expended as needed.

Historic OverviewCareme was typical of the great chefs who served royalty and nobility rather than

a larger public. After him, the organizational pattern that developed in the kitchens of the large private clubs of London was emulated in much of Europe and North America, especially at the modern hotels that began to develop near the end of the nineteenth century. The great writer-chefs of this period, however, tended to write with a view to the domestic cook of the private house. Most of the left behind little information about how to organize work on a large scale. But the greatest chef of the Victorian era, Alexis Soyer, did include kitchen organization in his book, The Gastronomic Regenerator, written and published in the middle of the nineteenth century when the author was at the height of his fame. In fact, this book, ;subtitled A simplified and entirely New System of Cookery, included, in Soyers' words, "correct and minute plans how kitchens of a royal palace to that of the humble cottage, are to be constructed and furnished.

Soyer's kitchen plan provided for a larder department with specialized subsections for each type of meat, a separate pastry and confectionery room, and an L-shaped kitchen with different sections for roasting, cooking, and so on. The exact details of Soyer's designs are unimportant now because they were based on methods such as open -fire roasting and physical constraints such as nonrefrigereted storage that are now obsolete. But the principle of designing the physical layout of the kitchen to use one's available methods to best advantage remains.

After Soyer came Escoffier, the first famous chef to use his cooking talents in a large modern hotel, where they would benefit the broader public. This presented or the first time the challenge (which still exists) of how to serve a wide variety of freshly prepared, excellent dishes to a large number of people. Escoffier met this challenge by ;adding the principle of task organization to that of kitchen layout, ;thus perfection the Partie system. Escoffier studied the food and cookery work behind the recipes and allocated tasks to different specialists so as to ;help produce even the most complex dishes regularly, efficiently, and swiftly. This sometimes meant breaking down processes ad allocating different tasks to different sections for the production of single dishes. Veal escalope, for example, might be cut by the butcher, flattened and breadcrumbed by the larder cook, sautéed in butter by the sauce cook, and then assembled by the chef, using appropriate garnishes prepare dinother corners of the kitchen.

The Partie system today, however, is simpler than it was in Escoffier's time because of several historical developments:

The introduction of machinery to do work previously done by people.Changing public tastes toward simpler menus and mealsEconomic factors that encourage the reduction of expensive labor and the

simplification of recipe and service'The processing of food by freezing, canning ;and dehydration, which eliminates a

great deal of basic preparation work.The Partie system will undergo ;still more change as automation, method study,

and work simplification are increasingly applied within the kitchen. Understanding the Partie system will remain useful, however, because further improvements are more likely to becoveived by those who know both the traditional system and new technological breakthroughs. This ensures progress rather than haphazard changes which can hurt, or at least fail to help, productivity.

Adaptation ad SummarizationThe essence of the Partie system is the division of work into sections; each section

or Partie is controlled by a chef de Partie, ;who might be regarded as the section foreman as well as a craft specialist. All the parties come ;under the control of the chef de cuisine, who is aided by one or more souse chefs. In large establishments, a sous chef has no Partie duties, although in smaller one, a sous chef may also serve as in important chef de Partie. The chain of responsibility and the organization of a large kitchen under the partie system is illustrated in figure 7 -1. In the largest hotels and restaurants, about a dozen principal parties are established under the chef de cuisine and his sous chefs. The team of cooks and all their assistants under the partie system is commonly called the "brigade".

Adaptations Due to Size

Only a few of the top luxury hotels still carry a brigade of cooks divided into paties that include every section that will be referred to in the next chapter. As hotels in restaurants have become more widespread, smaller, and more specialized, varied adaptations of the partie system have taken place (figures 7-2 and 7-3) and new but related systems have developed. Common variation include:

The garde manger - either alone or with a small staff - handling all the different tasks relating to meat, poultry, and fish

Joining together two or more kitchen parties - for example, soup preparation and vegetable cookery.

Having a broad three-part division into larder work, pastry work, and the main kitchen work (even here, in very small establishments, there is often intermingling of the branches of work)

The smallest establishments - those employing nor chef and one or perhaps two assistant cooks - cannot be regarded as operating even an adaptation of the partie system because they lack sufficient people to apportion the tasks in a meaningful way. Each person in such small establishments must therefore be prepared to do almost the full range of tasks.7-1 Arrangement of large kitchen brigade. From Fuller, Professional Kitchen Management

7-2Arrangement of medium kitchen brigade. From Fuller,Professional KitchenManagement

Chef de Cuisine ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chef Patissier

Chef Garde-Manger Chef de Partie Chef de Partie (Saucier, Rotisseur, (Potager, Entremeteur) Poissonnier) Vegetable and Breakfast Kitchen Porter /Plongeur Assistants

7 - 3 Arrangement of small kitchen brigade. From Fuller, Professional Kitchen Management

Chef de Cuisine (working)

Sours Chef working as Saucier and Poissonier combined

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Chef Garde - Manger Chef de Partie (Potager, Rotisseur, Entremeteur combined) Vegetable Hand Chef Patissier Kitchen Porter /Plongeur

Recipe for Organizing a Meaningful Partie SystemYield: An effective division of space, equipment, and people to perform the job in the most productive wayIngredients: Understanding of the establishment's goals regarding menu size and style of serviceKnowledge of the type of clientele to be servedKnowledge of the work skills possessed by individual employeesA detailed list of ;all equipment items and work areasUnderstanding of the work procedures required to produce the items offered on the menuMethod:Lay out the equipment so that it can be used efficiently, preventing unnecessary motion and effort. Items used for related procedures should be kept together, and different groups ;of items should be kept in separate areas. Assign responsibility for each work procedure to the person(s) with the most skill in doing it.Adaptations Due to Modern Trends

Apart from simplification of the partie system in response to size limitations, other factors increasingly affect the organization of the kitchen. For example, the widespread purchasing of already prepared foods such as portion-controlled cutlets and frozen vegetables greatly reduces and streamlines the food preparation workload. Whereas a good staff ratio in a conventional system is one employee per twenty meals, it is one employee per thirty-five to forty meals in some of the frozen meal systems. The development of microwave ovens and other modern kitchen equipment has also promoted significant progress. New and better apparatuses require continual changes in the way kitchens are operated. The best future adaptations in kitchen organization will be brought about by those who make a careful study of the work procedures involved in light of new facilities, products, and techniques.

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