So I was writing about cultural festival in one of my series. The MC's class is doing a Japanese cafe that serves Japanese sweets. And then it hit me. How did those characters in animes and mangas who set up eateries in their classrooms wash their cutleries and cups? And no, they didn't use disposable ones. I settled with making my characters clean the plates and cups with clothes but how do others do it?
The way we did it back in school, we have a curtain separating the 'kitchen' and the rest of the classroom. Different with mangas and animes, we did not actually cook in the classroom, as the use of fire in the classroom would be against school rules. The people assigned to 'the kitchen' only assembled stuff on the plates and prepared drinks. The actual cooking was done in the Home Economics classroom where each class doing cafes were assigned a table and a stove under a teacher's supervision.
At most, the 'kitchen' in the classroom only have microwave ovens in case the food was cold by the time it reached the classroom. The food would be transported in something like a bento box from the HE classroom to the 'dry kitchen' where they're taken out and put on a plate, depending on the order received. If our menu included rice, white rice would also be cooked in the classroom using a rice cooker.
Below is the breakdown on manpower. Rotated means the number before it is for one shift, so total manpower would be double the number:
1)
Dry kitchen
- 2 people, rotated. Cooking skill not required. The food just needs to look good. Usually one person does the food, the other do the drinks. Equipment: Microwave oven, toaster, rice cooker, small fridge/ice box, 4 school tables.
2)
Wet kitchen
- 3 people, rotated. Requires cooking skills. Takes orders from the classroom via mobile phones. This is where vegetables, pastas, fish, chicken and meat are cooked. Rice is cooked in the classroom, only washing rice is done here. This is also where things were washed since each stove has a wash basin.
3)
Transporter/runner
- 2 to 4 people, not rotated. Their jobs were to take cooked food from the wet kitchen to the dry kitchen and take dirty plates and cutleries to the wet kitchen for washing. It wasn't their duty to wash the cutleries, but if the cooks were busy, they had to help out. They were free when there were no orders, but worked hard when there were plenty of orders.
4)
Waiters and servers
- Calculated as 2 persons a table in total. So if there were 8 tables there would be 16 waiters and servers in total. They work in 3 or 4 shifts, not all work at the same time. So for 16 total manpower, you'd probably only see 4-5 servers or waiters at any given time.
5)
Ushers, promoters & maitre'd
- Any extra not part of the above duties.