That one Saturday where everything hit the fan in the walk-in

Last month I had a Saturday service where the walk-in cooler died around 4 PM and I didn't notice until the line was already in the weeds. Lost about $300 worth of prep I had done that morning, including 12 quarts of hollandaise base that had just barely started to turn. My sous chef had to run to the store down the street for emergency ice while I started reworking the menu on the fly. We got through it but my ticket times shot up by like 8 minutes and I had to comp three tables. Has anyone else had a cooler failure mid-shift and how did you handle the rush after?

2 comments

2 Comments

spencer_moore391mo ago

Man I felt that "everything hit the fan" line in my bones. Same thing happened to me last summer except it was the freezer that died right at 5pm on a Friday. I lost a whole batch of confit duck legs I had been saving for a special. Your sous running for emergency ice is a lifesaver move, I had to send my prep cook to the grocery store for ice too while I started pulling all the cold stuff into coolers we had in the back. One thing that saved me was I had a backup cooler in dry storage that we usually keep beer in, so we cleared that out and moved the most expensive proteins in there. For the menu rewrite I just dropped anything that needed cold hold like cold apps and focused on stuff we could fire hot and fast. Your ticket times shooting up sucks but at least you got through it without burning the place down.

morgan3161mo ago

Holy crap, you lost a whole batch of confit duck legs? Dude I would have cried right there in the walk-in. That's like a week of prep and a couple hundred bucks just gone.