Introduction
   Child Nutrition Professionals - whether a director, manager, or kitchen 
   staff - work to prepare tasty, nutritious, and safe meals for their 
   students.  To ensure the best quality meals are served in schools, 
   kitchens must effectively manage time and simplify their work.
   The following manual teaches the principles of time management and 
   work simplification as they relate to school food service and the 
   United States Department of Agriculture Child Nutrition Programs.
   After participating in the Kitchen Management Course, participants 
   will be able to:
   • Describe the importance of work and personal organization
   • Explain cost savings in a well managed kitchen
   • Design work, cleaning, and equipment schedules
   • Demonstrate techniques for simplifying work
   In the sections and activities ahead, new Child Nutrition Professionals 
   will have the opportunity to evaluate their current kitchen 
   management practices and to develop an action plan for improving 
   the time management and work simplification skills of their school 
   kitchen.
      Work Organization
   The first step in managing a successful school kitchen is to 
   organize the work.  Work organization helps to achieve 
   work with the greatest efficiency, maximum economy with 
   minimum effort, and secure the personal development of 
   those working in the organization.
   Advantages to Work Organization:
   • Labor is more efficiently used;
   • Equipment is used efficiently; 
   • Labor hours are more productive;
   • Responsibilities and the workload are more evenly 
   divided;
   • Employees have a better understanding of their duties;
   • The operation is run more efficiently;
   • The employee develops a sense of security and pride;
   • There is less change of a job begin left incomplete; and,
   • There is less pressure and strain.
       What other advantages can you think of?
                Project 1
    Look at this example of how work organization can improve outcomes even in a home 
    kitchen.
    In the space below, roughly sketch the kitchen in your home.  Identify where you 
    currently store the ingredients and equipment needed to make coffee and draw the path 
    you follow while making coffee.  (Consider using a red pen to draw the path)
                Project 1
    Now consider how you could better organize the work that must be done in your home 
    kitchen to make coffee.
    Draw another rough sketch of your kitchen at home.  How could you decrease the 
    amount of space between your cups and your coffee pot?  Are you running back and 
    forth between the counter and the refrigerator to get creamer?  Where is the sugar in 
    relation to where you place your coffee cup on the counter?  How can you make coffee 
    more efficiently in your kitchen with small changes? 
          Cost Savings
   The second step in successful school kitchen management is to 
   consider cost savings.  Cost savings is the reduction of business 
   expenses and is important to Child Nutrition Programs because 
   meals are reimbursed at a specified amount.  That amount must 
   cover food, labor, and indirect costs.  Child Nutrition Professionals 
   must look at current policies and procedures that potentially 
   increase costs and consider ways they can improve cost savings.
   With increasing food costs, labor costs, and other expenses, the 
   Child Nutrition dollar is being stretched further than ever.  Food 
   cost is not the only criteria that schools must look at to find a 
   source of saving money.
   One place school kitchens can look for cost savings is in their 
   management of time.  After all, TIME IS MONEY.
   Saving Money by Time Management
   The exercise on the next page will help you to see how labor 
   dollars can be lost in a variety of ways. Often the person wasting 
   them is not even aware that it is happening.