Back of the House: Front and Center

Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina puts the kitchen, and most cooking, in full view of guests.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 5/1/2007

On a busy day, Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina serves about 650 entrees, ranging from burritos to pizza. Even though 80 percent of the menu is prepared from scratch, the 68 restaurants have no "real" kitchen to speak of—just a 500-square-foot prep kitchen. The menu is prepared in full view of guests.

The front-of-the-house kitchen can fill three to four orders per minute, says Thang Nguyen, vice president of operations for the Charlotte, N.C.-based fast-casual Mexican chain. That speed means "the 20th person in line can get his burrito in 5 minutes," Nguyen says.

Quickly turning out a high volume of fresh prepared food requires a finely tuned kitchen, with no wasted space and no wasted steps.

Prep Time

Staffers arrive at the restaurant at 9 a.m. to start preparing for lunch. They make guacamole from scratch, fry chips, chop vegetables, and slice limes for the bar.

In a nod to efficiency, several sauces are prepared at a commissary, and shredded pork and beef arrive in heat-and-eat bags. Produce is delivered daily, and other food supplies, twice a week.

The 700-square-foot display kitchen holds a flat-top grill, a radiant-heat grill, a deep fryer, a clamshell grill, a hot-food holding box and undercounter refrigeration. The prepared foods are set into a six-compartment steam table. By 11 a.m., the restaurant is ready to serve customers.

The staff cooks throughout the day, replenishing steam pans of meat, beans and rice. Most of the prepared food is served to customers; cooked food is held for no more than four hours.

Small Changes, Big Results

Salsarita’s kitchen design is 5 years old, with the equipment package costing between $55,000 and $80,000. However, the company makes changes every few months to improve efficiency.

One change, removing the swinging door that separated the prep kitchen from the front of the house, improved ticket times by 10 percent to 15 percent and overall efficiency by 25 percent. Blue and green ceramic tile placed on the wall of the open kitchen makes the area attractive to customers.

The company continues to tinker with the equipment package as well. Beth Trescher, a chain salesperson at Mobile Fixture and Equipment Company, the Mobile, Ala.-based company that supplies Salsarita’s kitchen equipment, says that Nguyen has stringent rules about new equipment: "It has to improve efficiency and cost the same or less."

Sometimes that combination of benefits shows up in small packages. Trescher found a manufacturer that makes what she calls a "queso bag opener," a letter-opener type of device that helps employees squeeze every bit of shredded cheese out of a bag—as much as 10 percent more product.

Improving for the Future

Salsarita’s recently bought a high-speed oven for a new line of personal-size pizzas. The small, square oven, which bakes a pizza in 30 seconds, will be installed in all restaurants by summer, at about $6,000 per store. The oven, currently near the bar, will be relocated to a more convenient location on the hot line.

Nguyen plans to use the oven to improve other menu items, such as a wet burrito platter meal, $5.99, to help boost dinner business. Currently, lunch averages 60 percent of sales.

The chain has also increased kitchen space, to about 1,100 square feet from 800 square feet total (front and back of house), to accommodate its catering business. Catering now accounts for 5 percent to 10 percent of sales; Nguyen would like that figure to be closer to 15 percent.

Salsarita’s requests catering orders 24 hours in advance, but does accept last-minute orders. When that happens, "all hands are on deck," Nguyen says.