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Next-Day Kitchen Prep List from Bookings

Example prompt: "Every evening at 5pm, look at tomorrow's bookings in our reservations sheet, work out the likely dish counts using our standard menu-mix ratios, cross-check against current stock, and draft a prep list per kitchen station so the head chef can sign off before service."

The Problem

The prep list for tomorrow is the head chef's job at the end of service, and it gets done at the wrong time — either at 11pm after a heavy Saturday when the chef is wrung out, or at 7am the next morning when the cold larder has already started without a clear brief. The job itself is mechanical — multiply tomorrow's covers by our standard menu-mix percentages, work out what needs portioning and what needs to come out of the freezer overnight, cross-check against what is in the walk-in. The trouble is that doing it well takes twenty minutes of clear thinking that the chef does not have at either end of the day, so it gets done badly and the kitchen runs short on the wrong dish at 8pm.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build a workflow that fires every evening and reads tomorrow's bookings from the reservations Google Sheet. A code step multiplies the expected cover count by the menu-mix ratios held on a 'Menu Mix' tab — the percentages each section of the menu has run at over the last three months, broken down by lunch and dinner and by day of the week so a Tuesday lunch is not estimated from a Saturday dinner ratio. An LLM step takes the projected dish counts and writes a prep list per station — cold larder, sauté, grill, pastry — with portion counts, defrost-overnight items, and any pre-make-and-chill items that need a chiller slot tonight. A second code step cross-checks the projected ingredients against the stock sheet and adds a 'low stock' note next to any line that would run short. The prep list is saved as a Google Doc with tomorrow's date and posted into #kitchen-prep on Slack, with a copy emailed to the head chef. Glass Box preview shows the cover count, the menu-mix percentages applied, the projected dish counts, and the per-station list before anything is posted.

Example Workflow Steps

  1. Trigger (scheduled): Every evening at 5pm, before evening service if there is one, after lunch otherwise.
  2. Step 1 (integration): Read tomorrow's bookings from the 'Reservations' tab — covers, sitting time, any pre-orders, any allergens noted.
  3. Step 2 (integration): Read the 'Menu Mix' tab for the section-by-section percentages for tomorrow's day-and-sitting combination.
  4. Step 3 (code): Project the dish counts by multiplying expected covers by the menu-mix ratios, rounding up to the next sensible portioning unit (a fillet, a half-pint of dressing, a tray of focaccia).
  5. Step 4 (integration): Read the 'Stock' tab and join the projected ingredients against the on-hand quantities, flagging any line where projected use would leave us at or below the chef's reorder threshold.
  6. Step 5 (llm): Draft the prep list per station — cold larder, sauté, grill, pastry — with portion counts, defrost-overnight items, and pre-make-and-chill items grouped by where they will live overnight.
  7. Step 6 (integration): Save the prep list as a Google Doc named 'Prep — [tomorrow's date]' in the 'Daily Prep Lists' Drive folder.
  8. Step 7 (integration): Post a short summary in #kitchen-prep on Slack with the cover count, the doc link, and the low-stock flags; email the doc to the head chef for sign-off.

Integrations Used

  • Google Sheets — the reservations register, the menu-mix ratios, and the stock sheet that the projection runs against
  • Google Docs — the prep list itself, a named doc per day so the chef can mark it up overnight or first thing
  • Google Drive — the 'Daily Prep Lists' folder that builds a running record of what was projected versus what actually ran
  • Gmail — the head-chef sign-off path so the doc lands in the inbox alongside the other end-of-day mail
  • Slack — the #kitchen-prep channel for the team summary and the low-stock flags

Who This Is For

Head chefs and sous chefs at independent restaurants, bistros, and gastropubs running thirty to two hundred covers a service, where bookings are taken into a Google Sheet (or sync into one from the booking platform), the menu mix is stable enough to track on a sheet, and the prep list currently gets written at the wrong end of the day.

Time & Cost Saved

The prep list takes a head chef twenty to thirty minutes when done properly — and it usually is not done properly because that twenty minutes does not exist at either end of service. The workflow does the projection and the cross-check; the chef spends five minutes editing the draft against what they know about tomorrow that the sheet does not. The bigger saving is on the days when the projection prevents the kitchen running short on the dish that would otherwise have eighty-sixed at 8pm — one or two of those a month covers the time saved on every other day in the year.