Full-service restaurant head chef - firing cadence and ticket-rail SOP - how tickets flow, how rushes get inserted, how order changes get chased, and how allergy flags travel, so every "I thought you knew" between kitchen and floor dies on paper

You are the head chef of a full-service restaurant. Write "firing cadence and expediting" as an archivable standards document, executed jointly by the expediter, line cooks, runners, and floor servers. The context: dine-in full service, multiple tables firing in parallel, cold and hot courses interleaved, banquets and walk-ins sharing the kitchen. I will tell you whether this restaurant runs paper tickets or kitchen-print tickets; write for the matching form.

1. Ticket flow (the foundation of everything)
- Each order produces [N] ticket copies: floor copy / pass copy for the expediter / cashier (with kitchen printers, the printed ticket is the record, spiked on the rail in table order)
- The expediter holds the master ticket per table and strikes each dish as it leaves; the strike-through is the only record of "served" - "I remember it went out" is void
- Runners confirm table number and dish on pickup and announce twice: once at the pass (to the expediter), once before landing at the table

2. Firing order
- Cold courses leave complete within [T] minutes of seating (or partially, at the host's pace)
- Hot dishes sequence by table balance, not by per-table course order - when three tables all await their second hot dish, each gets one before any table gets two
- Within a table, sequence follows the ticket marks: centerpiece fish fires mid-run through the hot dishes; soup and staples follow the guests' pace or the host's cue
- Banquets run on their own event ticket, physically separated from walk-in tickets - neither queue jumps the other

3. Rush insertion (the link that breaks first)
- All rushes route through the expediter: the server reports it, the expediter re-sequences and marks it (folded corner / red clip)
- A server shouting directly at the line is void, and line cooks are entitled not to answer - shouting past the rail means jumping the queue: one table accelerated, three slowed, and then those three start rushing too
- A table rushed a second time: the whole table moves up - not one compensating dish, the entire ticket advances

4. Order changes and voids
- Additions, voids, and spec changes require a new ticket; word of mouth is void
- On receiving a change, the expediter marks the master ticket and reads it back to the floor for confirmation ("Room 3, adding one spicy fish stew, mild heat - correct?") - the read-back is the error-catcher
- Voids stop at the line if not yet fired; already-fired items follow house policy and get logged

5. Allergy and restriction flags (a safety line, not a service line)
- Servers mark heat level / restrictions / allergies in a fixed spot on the ticket using house-wide symbols
- The expediter checks the marks during assembly and checks again at the pass before pickup - two checks, no exceptions
- An ambiguous mark sends the ticket back to the floor to be rewritten, never guessed - a guessed allergy is an incident, not a complaint

6. Close-out
- Every close: reconcile [1] settled table at random across floor copy, expediter marks, and cashier ticket; log any mismatch and review weekly
- Missed strikes, extra dishes, and wrong-table landings get logged the same day - facts only, no blame; the weekly review looks for patterns

Red lines (own section, posted at the pass):
- Word of mouth is void: no ticket, no addition or void
- Shouting is void: the line answers only to the expediter's rail
- Ambiguous allergy mark, no dish: back it goes, no exceptions

Output format: sectioned, archivable document, red lines in bold; every section ends with a one-line "check basis" - the concrete action a shift lead uses to verify that section is actually being followed.

Why it is written this way

Kitchen-floor conflict is rarely about skill - it is information snapping between two doors: a shout, a verbal addition, an allergy held in someone's head. Every snap resurfaces thirty minutes later as one table's wait or one inedible plate. The whole SOP runs on a single principle - word of mouth is void, the ticket is the truth - and a document with one principle is the kind people remember and auditors can check.

Rush insertion is the section that breaks first because it looks harmless: a server shouts, a cook obliges, everyone is happy - and the queue has been jumped, three tables slow down together, and those tables start rushing too. Writing "shouting is void" as the line cook's entitlement rather than only a ban gives the person following the rail permission to not answer; concentrating insertion rights in the expediter gives the rail a single scheduling entrance.

The read-back on order changes exists because additions mutate in transit in endlessly creative ways: table numbers swap, specs drop, portions double. Reading back costs three seconds and prevents a whole dish from being scrapped. Allergies get two separate checks and their own safety-line framing because their failure mode is an incident, not a complaint - nobody can absorb the cost of a guessed "probably no chili."

The nightly reconciliation is the SOP's self-check: a three-way mismatch means someone went around the tickets that day. Drift itself is not the danger - drift nobody notices is. Facts-only, no-blame logging keeps the record honest: the moment logs become a blame instrument, logs start lying.

Variables