Hospitality glossary · Service and operations
The pass is the counter between kitchen and dining room where finished dishes are checked and handed over, and it is the point at which responsibility for a plate moves from chefs to the service team.
In practice
Definitions are easy. What matters is how the thing behaves in a real operation, and where it tends to go wrong.
During service it is normally controlled by the head chef or senior sous, who calls the order away, times the components so a table's dishes land together, checks each plate and holds anything that is not right. It is also the place where tickets, timings and table numbers get reconciled, which is why a calm pass usually means a calm service and a chaotic one means both sides are about to blame each other.
Letting two people run it at once. The pass needs a single voice calling away or courses arrive split, tables get out of sequence and the section falls behind. Where a site has constant friction between kitchen and floor, the cause is very often that nobody has actually been told they own it.
Questions
Something here that doesn’t match what you’re seeing in your own business? That is usually worth a conversation rather than another article.
The pass is the counter between kitchen and dining room where finished dishes are checked and handed over, and it is the point at which responsibility for a plate moves from chefs to the service team. During service it is normally controlled by the head chef or senior sous, who calls the order away, times the components so a table's dishes land together, checks each plate and holds anything that is not right. It is also the place where tickets, timings and table numbers get reconciled, which is why a calm pass usually means a calm service and a chaotic one means both sides are about to blame each other.
Letting two people run it at once. The pass needs a single voice calling away or courses arrive split, tables get out of sequence and the section falls behind. Where a site has constant friction between kitchen and floor, the cause is very often that nobody has actually been told they own it.
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