How Many People Touch Your Plate Before It Reaches Your Table?

When someone working in a restaurant hears the words “I need hands,” it’s a call to action, akin to the Bat-Signal being flashed into the sky summoning superhero help. Someone needs assistance and they need it now. Very often, that phrase is used because there’s food in the kitchen that needs to go to a table immediately, so someone will drop what they’re doing to rush that hot plate of food to the hungry customer. But have you ever thought about just how many hands are needed to get that plate to the table?

It starts with the dishwasher

A plate begins its day in a restaurant resting in a stack of other plates, freshly washed from the night before. The first hand that touches it is that of the dishwasher whose job is to take that plate out of the dish room and to the kitchen closer to its destiny of being a vessel for delicious food. The dishwasher bids farewell to their charge (or, charger), knowing that it will soon return from whence it came. 

And then the kitchen team

The next hand that touches the plate belongs to the chef or cook who will now do with that plate the purpose was made for. It’s pulled from its stack ready for action. Depending on the restaurant, food will be lovingly placed or hastily slapped onto its surface just as the customer ordered it. It might get a hamburger and a handful of fries or perhaps it will host a dry-aged filet mignon and dauphinoise potatoes with yet another set of hands belonging to the saucier gracing this plate with another loving touch. From there, the plate is placed “on the line” until more hands will touch it.

Next is the expeditor

An expeditor is the next person that might come into contact with the plate. They’re the person in  the kitchen whose job is to look at every plate of food and determine that it’s ready to be served. Maybe it needs a last minute garnish or a quick wipe to ensure the plate is clean without any messy drips or unwanted drizzles. They’ll give that plate one final glance before saying, “I need hands.”

The food runner grabs the baton

In steps the food runner. Never has a job description been so apt as this one. The food runner’s sole duty is to carry the plates of food from the kitchen to the tables, swiftly moving back and forth from the back of the house to the front of the house. They live in both worlds. 

I once worked with a food runner named Michael who loved his job. He told me he got to stay in the kitchen most of the time, only breaching the swinging doors to the outside world of soft lighting and softer music to drop off food and then retreat to the kitchen with its fluorescent lights and the loud clanging of pots and pans. His interaction with customers was minimal and he liked it that way. “If they tell me they need something, I just nod my head and then go tell their server.” If there’s no food runner, then it’s the server who runs that food and touches this plate one last time before the customer does.

The busser drives it home

After the meal is done, one final pair of hands will hold that plate. The busser will clear the table, taking away each dish to be tossed into a bus tub, the plate’s destiny fulfilled. The busser will carry it to the dish room where the dishwasher will take the plate and literally lather, rinse, and repeat. By now, this plate has had more hands on it than a hardbody truck in Texas that twenty-four people are trying to win. Hands Across America was less handsy than a plate in a busy restaurant. 

Running a restaurant takes a village. No one person is doing everything and the plate is the through line that connects one employee to the next. It’s handed from person to another, seamlessly creating an experience for customers as if it was just one set of hands doing it all. If you ever hear someone in a kitchen say they need a hand, they probably mean they need help, but if you want to give them a round of applause, that’s OK too.