Kitchen Prep List Template

A prep list is the morning's to-do list for the kitchen: every sauce, cut, portion and garnish that has to exist before the first ticket prints, and how much of each. A good one is built on pars — the amount of each item one service needs — so the list is a subtraction, not a guess. If the par for diced onion is 6 quarts and 2 are left from last night, the line preps 4.

Pars come from your sales history. Pull a few weeks of item counts from the POS, convert dishes into the prep items they use with your recipe cards, and set the par a little above an average day for that service. Raise pars before a known busy night; drop them after a slow week instead of letting product age out.

1. Replace the sample rows with your own prep items and assign each to a station.
2. Set a par for the service you are prepping for (lunch and dinner usually differ).
3. Before prep starts, count what is already made and enter it as on hand.
4. Prep the red rows. Anything at par shows green and is skipped.
5. Print one copy per station, or copy the table into your group chat.

Prepping ahead only saves money if the product is used before it spoils. The FDA Food Code requires a date mark on ready-to-eat, time/temperature control foods that are held refrigerated for more than 24 hours, and limits them to 7 days at 41°F or below, counting the day they were made. Many states and counties enforce that rule through their adopted edition of the Code, so check yours.

Use the shelf-life column for your kitchen's own rule, which is often shorter for quality: cut herbs and pico fade long before they become unsafe. Items with one or two days of life belong close to service, not in a Monday batch. Store new prep behind the old so the oldest container is used first, and log anything you throw out in the waste log so pars get corrected.

Large batches of soups, stocks and braises also have to cool fast enough: from 135°F to 70°F within 2 hours and to 41°F within 6 hours in total. Record those batches on a cooling log.

Grouping rows by station lets each cook own a section: garde manger takes the dressings and cold garnishes, grill takes portioned proteins and marinades, sauté takes sauces and starches. It also shows where the morning is overloaded. If one station carries most of the red rows every day, move a task or start that cook earlier.

The sample sheet above is a Friday lunch for a casual restaurant expecting about 120 covers. Seven of the eight items are below par, so the list sends the grill cook to portion 45 patties and marinate 12 pounds of chicken, while the croutons are already at par and drop off the day's work. The four items with two days of shelf life or less (onion, pico, chicken and patties) are the ones to make last, closest to service.