Prep list

A prep list is the kitchen's plan for the day before the doors open: every sauce to make, protein to portion, vegetable to cut, and station to stock, each with a quantity. It turns the broad discipline of Mise en place into a concrete, assignable set of tasks so nothing is discovered missing at seven o'clock. A good prep list is quantified (six quarts of stock, not make stock) and tied to the day's expected volume rather than yesterday's habit.

The prep list is where a service is won or lost before the first ticket prints. Under-prep and you 86 the hero dish and scramble mid-rush; over-prep and the surplus turns into Food waste and drags Food cost percentage. The quantities on the list are really Par level decisions made a day at a time, and getting them right depends on predicting how many Covers you will do and of what. That prediction is the hard part, and it is exactly where most kitchens fall back on gut feel.

Demand forecasting turns the prep list from a guess into a number. Tools that read your own sales history by day, daypart, weather, and local events tell you how much of each item to prep, and vendors market accuracy gains like 35% more accurate over traditional methods. An AI pastry-demand model built for a multi-cafe operator lifted ordering accuracy by 8% in its first month. Tools include Lineup.ai, 7shifts, and Apicbase. See demand forecasting.