Kaizen: Because “We’ve Always Done It This Way” Is Not a Kitchen Strategy

The Japanese concept of Kaizen, which roughly translates to continuous incremental improvement, is an idea that is beautifully simple: make small improvements, consistently, over time. Kaizen aims to eliminate waste and redundancies.

A long-ago recurring sketch from Saturday Night Live featured Phil Hartman as Gene, a hyper-organized public television cooking show host. Gene's obsessive compulsion for neatness, sorting, and cleaning prevents him from ever actually finishing a dish. He spends the entire runtime wiping surfaces, arranging ingredients by exact size or color, washing and labeling trash, and fixing microscopic flaws. Because Gene was caught up in his redundancies, he never completed any of his recipes. While we appreciate Gene’s attention to cleanliness and organization Gene was not practicing Kaizen. Because Kaizen isn't about making everything perfect, it is about making everything better.

Kaizen asks a simple question: What can we do to make our space a little better today? Kitchen people already understand the spirit of Kaizen. We just usually call it mise en place.

Everything has a place. Everything has a purpose. The things you use constantly should be close. The things you rarely use shouldn't occupy prime space. And if cooks waste time struggling with frayed, dilapidated, taped cardboard dispenser on roll of wrap, maybe the cardboard is signaling an opportunity.

Instead of accepting small annoyances as “just how the kitchen works,” Kaizen encourages us to notice them. Why are the deli containers stored thirty feet from the prep table where we use them? Why does everyone spend five minutes looking for the vegetable peeler? Why are there six open containers of Dijon? Why are we doing things twice?

Kaizen looks for ways to replace those points of friction with sensible systems and organization. Organization shouldn't depend on tribal knowledge. If only one person knows where something belongs, then the system doesn't know where it belongs.

If cooks need to make repeated trips to dish to retrieve a clean pair of tongs, move the tongs closer.

Glory! You have just implemented Kaizen. Move things, change things, make continuous small improvements.

Everyone who does the work should help improve the work. The Kaizen Kitchen deploys everyone to notice, question, improve, standardize and repeat.

The goal is to make the smallest improvement useful for everyone, if it works, make it the new standard. The goal isn't perfection; the goal is to create a kitchen that is slightly better today than it was yesterday. A little cleaner, safer, efficient, organized and a lot less occurrences of somebody yelling: “WHERE THE HECK IS THE PEELER?” That's Kaizen. And if we practice it every day, eventually the answer will be: exactly where it's supposed to be.

10 RULES OF KAIZEN IN THE KITCHEN

Small Improvements. Every Shift.

1. Everything has a home.
If you don’t know where it goes, neither does the next cook. Give every tool, ingredient, container, and piece of equipment a permanent home.

2. Stop taking field trips.
If you walk across the kitchen 40 times a day for the same thing, move the thing. 

3. Make the right way the easy way.
Labels. Pars. Prep lists. Designated shelves. Standard containers.

4. Touch it once when possible.
Every unnecessary move costs time. Prep it, portion it, label it, store it. Done. Don’t create extra work for yourself or tomorrow’s team.

5. If it’s empty, fix it.
Refill it. Restock it. Replace it.

6. Clean as you go.
A clean station is faster, safer, and more efficient to work with.

7. Refrigeration organization is imperative.
Fifo. Labels facing out. Dates visible. Like items together. Pars maintained.

8. Ask “why?”
Why is this stored here?
Why do we prep it this way?
Why do we keep running out?
Why are we throwing so much away?
“we’ve always done it this way” is not an answer.

9. Fix small problems before a busy service finds them.
As the saying goes: proper prior planning prevents poor performance
Fix friction before service magnifies it.

10. Leave it better than you found it.
Each station.
The walk-in.
The prep list.
The system.
The kitchen.

You don’t have to revolutionize the kitchen today, just improve one thing.

Then do it again tomorrow. 

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About the Author: Chef Mary Howley