Kitchen Prep List Template: Build It From Pars and Covers

A good prep list answers one question: what do we need to make today so we do not run out tonight, without making so much that we throw it away on Thursday? Everything on the list should be the result of a small calculation. If the list is written from memory or habit ("we always make two pans of rice"), you will over-prep on slow days and run out on busy ones.

The basic math

For each item, the amount to prep is:

Prep amount = par for the day − what is already on hand (and still good)

The par is how much of that item you want ready at the start of service. On-hand is what is sitting in the walk-in or on the line from previous prep, counted, not guessed. If the result is zero or negative, you do not make any.

That is it. Most of the work is in setting the par correctly and counting honestly.

Setting prep pars from forecast covers

A prep par is not the same as an ordering par. An ordering par tells you how many cases of onions to keep in the building. A prep par tells you how many quarts of diced onion to have ready for tonight. We cover ordering pars in the guide on setting kitchen par levels.

The cleanest way to set a prep par is to tie it to covers:

1. Pull how many of each dish you sold over the last four same weekdays. Four Fridays, not the last four days.
2. Divide by covers for those days to get a rate. If you sold 88 chicken bowls across 640 Friday covers, that is about 0.14 bowls per cover.
3. Multiply the rate by tonight's forecast covers. A 180-cover Friday forecast gives about 25 bowls.
4. Convert dishes to prepped components using the recipe. If each bowl uses 150 g of marinated chicken, that is 3.75 kg.
5. Add a buffer, usually 10 to 20 percent, depending on how bad running out would be and how long the item keeps.

So the Friday prep par for marinated chicken might be 4.5 kg. On a 110-cover Tuesday, the same rate gives a par closer to 2.7 kg.

Most kitchens do not redo this math every day. They set a par per day type (weekday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday brunch) and revisit it monthly or when the menu changes. That is fine. The mistake is setting one par for the whole week.

Shelf life changes everything

The buffer you can afford depends on how long the item lasts. A vinaigrette that keeps for a week can be made in big batches with a generous par. Cut avocado that browns in hours cannot.

For each prepped item, write down its shelf life once and put it on the list. That stops someone making a three-day supply of something that lasts one day. If you work under the FDA Food Code, ready-to-eat, time/temperature control for safety food held cold for more than 24 hours must be date marked, with a maximum of seven days including the day of preparation. Your own quality limit will often be shorter than that. The date marking guide covers the rule and how to label.

Batch size is the other half. Some things only make sense in a full recipe: a stock, a braise, a dough. If your par is 3 liters and the recipe makes 8, you either make 8 and plan to use it over several days (if shelf life allows), or you scale the recipe. Write the batch size on the list so the cook does not have to decide.

Sample prep list

Here is a prep list for a hypothetical 150-cover Friday at a casual full-service restaurant. The count column is filled in by whoever does the morning count. The prep column is the subtraction.

A few things worth noticing. The vinaigrette and confit show zero prep, and they should stay on the list anyway, because the count is what tells you they are fine. The short rib comes out at 14 but the recipe yields 18, so you make one batch and carry the extra into Saturday, which its three-day life allows. The pico is made fresh every day because it does not hold.

Who writes it and when

There are two common setups, and both work.

In the first, the closing sous chef or line lead counts the walk-in and line at the end of the night and writes tomorrow's list. The morning prep cook arrives and starts without waiting. This is the best option if prep starts early, because the list is ready when the first person walks in. The risk is that a tired closer writes it in five minutes and guesses the counts.

In the second, the opening manager or prep lead counts first thing and writes the list before prep begins. The counts are fresher and more careful. The cost is 20 to 30 minutes in the morning before anything gets cut.

Either way, one named person owns the list each day. A list that "the team" writes is a list nobody checks. That person also signs off at the end that each line is either done or deliberately skipped, with a reason.

Larger kitchens often split the list by station so each cook gets their own sheet. That helps, but someone still needs to see the whole thing so prep that two stations share (stocks, sauces, diced aromatics) does not get made twice or not at all.

Counting on-hand honestly

The prep list is only as good as the on-hand column. The common failures:

• Counting containers instead of contents. A quart deli that is one-third full is not a quart.
• Counting product that is past its date or looks tired. If it will be thrown out, it is not on hand.
• Forgetting the line. Half a sixth pan of pico in the cold rail counts.
• Writing yesterday's number because "nothing changed."

A good habit is to make the person who counts also pull and toss anything expired at the same time. The count and the cleanout become the same job, and expired product stops hiding at the back of the shelf. If you log what gets thrown out, the food waste log will show you within a couple of weeks which pars are too high.

Adjusting pars over time

Two signals tell you a par is wrong.

If you regularly 86 an item before close, the par is too low, or the forecast missed. Look at which one first. If the item ran out on a night you did 40 more covers than forecast, the par is fine and the forecast needs work.

If an item regularly gets thrown out at the end of its shelf life, the par is too high. Cut it by the amount you are throwing out, and watch for a week.

Review pars monthly at minimum, and immediately after a menu change, a price change that shifts what people order, or the start of a new season. Patio season can double cold-app sales while cutting soup sales in half.

Keep it on paper or keep it digital

A clipboard works. A whiteboard works for small teams. The advantage of a digital list is that counts and completion times get recorded without anyone retyping them, so after a month you can see that the pico runs out every Saturday at 8 pm. If you use a checklist tool such as TenorOps, set the prep list up as a recurring daily task with the count as a required field, so a list cannot be marked done with blanks in it.

Whatever format you choose, keep last week's lists. They are the best data you have for setting next week's pars.