The Quarterback of the Kitchen? It’s Not Always the Chef

When will restaurants stop using thermal chit printers that contaminate their guests with BPA (Bisphenol A) - a known endocrine disruptor? Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece about testing positive for Bisphenol A even while actively trying to avoid it for years - perhaps this is a mystery source of contamination.

i always worked in small kitchens, two or three cooks on the line, and this was way before printers appeared in kitchens. we dealt with handwritten orders jammed onto a spike. i was very particular...don't recite the ticket, just say ordering. and never say fire table 8, relentless mocking would ensue. it was just pick up table up. and i had the dreams also. still have them but now they mostly relate to the years i worked in a retreat house run by The Order of Preachers. i'm always behind and don't have enough food. and i left that job 22 years ago. to the guy who worked at The Saloon.....did you know bill lalor, an unsung genius.

I was an expeditor at a French restaurant uptown and I couldn't even finish this article it was stressing me out so much I think what the expeditor shows is the extent to which restaurants at every level are just as much massive feats of logistical prowess as creative ability. In the back of my head I still hear that ticket machine going off...

Couldn't enjoy the article as much. Looked like a never-ending set of often repetitive answers to "What does an expeditor do ?" all starting with The expeditor does this.. The expeditor should.. The expeditor never.. Quite pedantic, could have shuffled it up better.

It's called multi-tasking on steroids when deadlines aren't measured in days or weeks, but in minutes. And nobody's better at the task than a competent medical resident, or an attending physician running an emergency room or a busy Intensive Care Unit. Screw-ups there don't mean cold entrees or unhappy diners, but involve life and death consequences. Non-stop triaging and reordering of priorities as new patients arrive and fresh crises manifest. We can label those who are talented at the balancing act as adrenalin junkies. But too much of that stress hormone will eventually burn out your adrenal glands. It's exhilarating, challenging, and fun for awhile, but eventually it's time to shift into a less grueling line of work.

Great article ! Really enjoyed learning about a part of the restaurant scene I knew little about ! Thanks !

Expediting has to be one of the most challenging jobs out there. I have not worked in a restaurant for about 30 years, but in the 80s when I was in high school I worked for the largest seafood restaurant in "Chicagoland" and what I now believe is considered the largest restaurant in the USA. At that time there were more than 300 tables. I was a food runner. The expediters had to possess qualities of organization, precision, steady temperament, and humor - to help the rest of us every day. The expediters at this particular restaurant embodied all of these qualities. At high school the next day, they were all considered the "burnouts" at school. To this day, that amazes me, because I don't believe a modern day CEO of any corporation would be as sharp or act as professionally. I miss those days.

I had to expedite a few times in some of the kitchens in which I worked. Was not my favorite position by any means. I preferred standing in my little saute corner, spinning about and managing my 9 pans. That was ordered chaos that I could control. The entire kitchen, well, you can only control so much. Later as sous chef and then chef, well, different coats (or rather, toques) and a bit more control since I could chop heads. But I really liked being a saute cook. And man, I was *good*. Sigh.

Both my husband and are pretty good home cooks and whenever guests comment that our food is so great that we should open a restaurant, I always tell them that cooking for 4 people is not the same as cooking for 40 people. For us, it stops being feasible with 8 people for BBQ and with more than 12 people for an oven type of meal.

OMG that 5 minute video almost gave me a nervous breakdown!

What a fine article! We watched an expediter in a 25 table restaurant and everything he sent out was LOVELY and TASTY. Such workers are true gems!

Having never worked in a kitchen, but having spent decades enjoying the output of kitchens, I have a new appreciation for the precision that many restaurants have for the orchestration of the dinner service. I can only imagine the tension that must exist when a large party arrives and tries to jam a dinner reservation in advance of a movie, theatre showing or a graduation ceremony and how much pressure that puts on the kitchen maestro!

Years (decades, actually) ago, I worked at The Saloon, across from Lincoln Center in Manhattan. In my time there I was a passable busboy, lousy waiter and good bartender. And the managers asked me several times if I wanted to learn to expedite. I never did because it seemed impossible to me, but I watched with admiration and envy whenever I went into the kitchen to pick up food. Thank you for this article. It reminded me of the joy I get from watching people do really hard things, epsecially when they can make them look easy!

Great restaurants are the Michelangelo's of modern times and earn every penny they get. Maybe I'm easily impressed but having dinner, eg, Daniel, NYC, is observing (through participation) amazing art. Building human enterprise into restaurant teamwork is a model that Washington, DC, might emulate.

Well, when you think about it, in a democracy every person, every position is valuable. There should be no competition, no hierarchy. That said, in the real world, some people are just more valuable because it takes a lot longer to acquire certain skill sets. And that always will be the motivating driver. I'd put the expediter on par with a really good dishwasher. Essential, but easily replaceable.

There is also an expediter in the front of the house, called a Floor Manager, orchestrating all the timing of reservations, bar patrons, turning tables, addressing timing and other problems, working with the expediter on the flow, firing tickets if others forget, because they watch every single table and person in the entire restaurant like a hawk, without appearing invasive. They also have to personally face off with difficult guests and situations, and sometimes abuse from both guests and chefs. Not to take anything away from the key expediter role in the dynamic, but frequently it seems like front of the house receives zero credit or glory for their finely honed skills in the intricate show of creating an excellent dining experience. It would be nice to see that once in a while.

Also, sometimes the Floor Manager is the expediter, worth noting, especially on less busy nights. As are servers sometimes. Restaurants that run well must function as a coherent team.

Over 25 years ago, I was hired as the restaurant chef for a hotel in Princeton, NJ. That was a month before Princeton University graduation week when alumni, families and VIP's streamed in. And get the team ready we can't have another crash and burn like the year before! A month to learn and retrain the team, adjust menus, develop working relationships with restaurant managers, wait staff, executive chef and F&B director. And learn how to expedite with NCR printers that overheat on the line. You are working off the balls for your feet, ordering in, firing, telling waiters they cannot order fire! You are ring master, juggler, good cop, bad cop, and master of your ship.

Seems like a natural for computerization with expediter aided and assisted by entries and updates. They still call shots but won't forget anyone or anything.

It all makes me want to run in the opposite direction.

I was a bartender for years and even the neighborhood bar had someone that served the expediter function. Absolutely invaluable. With a bar 2-3 people deep and most of them ordering food, we could not have done it without them.

Can't wait for the first episode of Top Expeditor!

I did not know such a position existed in restaurants. Looking back, I seem to have had that role in a couple of jobs I held during my working life--being "the man behind the curtain" was actually quite rewarding, but I had to make sure that management knew I was doing useful things.

Expo is one of my favorite jobs in a kitchen. We used to get tipped out by the waiters at one place.

How much are expediters paid?

When I worked at McDonalds in the 60's there was little automation. The "expediter" wrapped the burgers. They controlled the flow of all the food based on how fast burgers were being taken from the bin. On a busy afternoon, we were selling 3500 burger-equivalents an hour. There was a lot of food being prepared. It was a good lesson in efficiency and resource management. A bit like being a conductor of an orchestra or an air traffic controller. While you were directing traffic, you were wrapping burgers, one per second, for hours.

I'm reminded of a passage from Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" "The printer is going non-stop now. My left hand grabs tickets, separates out white copy for grill, yellow copy for saute, pink copy for me, coffee orders for the busboys. My right hand wipes plates, jams gaufrette potatoes and rosemary springs into mashed potatoes, moves tickets from the order to the fire positions, appetizers on order to appetizers out, I'm yelling full-time now, trying to hold it together, keep an even pace. My radar screen is filled with incoming bogeys and I'm shooting them down as fast as I can." Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential (p. 201). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Thanks for this (long overdue) article. I expedited for many years, and found it almost impossible to explain the job to people outside of the business. "So, you're a chef?" No. "A cook?" Not really. "A manager?" Sort of, but not really. As this article points out, The chef might be the featured performer, but the expediter is the conductor. "Conducting" a kitchen demands an impeccable sense of timing, an infinite amount of grace under pressure, and the ability to navigate the often rocky divide between the front and the back of the house. It is a very difficult job, and in my career i have seen very few people with the natural ability to do it well.