A first-week checklist for new joiners in catering and institutional food services

A dishwasher joins a corporate canteen on Monday, ten minutes before the lunch rush. He is shown the scullery sink and told to keep the trays moving. At twelve-thirty he places a hot ladle on the wrong rack, mixes the colour-coded boards and puts a tray of cooked rice in the open next to raw vegetables. Nobody was unkind. Nobody had a sheet.

A first week in catering and institutional food services must be practical, quick and visible. Below is a seven-day sheet you can copy, with a swap-in line for each type of kitchen.

Name: ____________  Role: ____________  Kitchen or site: ____________.
Start date: ____  Buddy: ____________  Shift lead: ____________.
DAY 1: Hairnet, apron, closed shoes, short nails, no jewellery on the line  [ ].
DAY 1: Hand wash steps shown and done  [ ]  Illness reporting rule explained  [ ].
DAY 1: Kitchen map: store, cold room, prep, cooking line, serving counter, scullery, waste  [ ].
DAY 2: Colour-coded chopping boards and knives, and what goes on each  [ ].
DAY 2: First in, first out in store and chiller, with labels and dates  [ ].
DAY 3: Station task with buddy (see swap-in lines below)  [ ].
DAY 4: Temperature log for the hot case, bain-marie or chiller, entered once under watch  [ ].
DAY 4: Allergen and diet card for the day's menu read aloud  [ ].
DAY 5: Service from start to finish, including plate count and clear-down  [ ].
DAY 6: Own station with buddy checking at two points  [ ].
DAY 7: Ten-minute talk with unit head: hours, pay day, leave, questions  [ ].
Signed: Joiner ______  Buddy ______  Shift lead ______  Unit head ______.

• Wedding and event catering. Vessel loading list, setting up a live counter, chafing dish fuel, serving spoon rules for veg and non-veg, breakdown and vessel count.
• Industrial canteen. Token or coupon scan, tray line, queue management at the peak twenty minutes, and returning trays to the scullery.
• School caterer. Portion size for each age group, tiffin box check, hot-holding on the van, and rules for entering the school gate.
• Hospital caterer. Diet card reading, labelled trays for diabetic, soft and renal diets, delivery to ward by trolley, and what to do if a patient has been moved.
• Meal subscription kitchen. Batch labelling, packing line, cold-pack use, route sheet for riders and cut-off times.

The buddy ticks each task the moment it is done. The shift lead scans the sheet before closing each day. The unit head reads it on day seven. If a line is blank, find out why. A blank often means the shift was busy, not that the joiner was careless.

Keep sheets in a folder at the site, one page per person. For a rotating event crew, put them in the bench file described in the crew bench post.

Skip the speech. Walk the joiner along the route a plate takes, from the store to the guest. Stop at the cold room and show the thermometer. Stop at the scullery and show the three-sink wash, rinse and sanitise order. Stop at the pass and show where cooked and raw never meet. End at the staff meal table and tell him when and where he eats. A joiner who has seen the whole route remembers it far better than one who was handed a rulebook.

Then give him one job he can finish well before lunch. Peeling, sorting greens, stacking trays. A small finished job tells him the kitchen noticed.

In a school or hospital kitchen add the people he will meet: the dietician, the school coordinator, the ward sister. A joiner who knows who might ring the kitchen phone, and why, is calmer at the first complaint.

For event crews, add one more line to the sheet: who drives the tempo, where the vessels are counted out and counted back, and what to do if the gas regulator hisses. Wedding kitchens work in borrowed halls with unfamiliar stoves, so the first week is also a lesson in looking for the gas valve, the fire extinguisher and the nearest exit before the first order is fired.

• The new helper is sent to the cold room without a jacket or a rule on how long to stay inside.
• A thawed tray goes back in the freezer, because nobody told the helper why it should not.
• The only person who speaks the joiner's language is on leave, so the instructions are guessed.
• The pay day is not stated, and the joiner has to ask a colleague.

The sheet plugs into your wider onboarding record. See how hospital caterers run early and late diet shifts and how wedding caterers plan training around the event calendar. For a tailored sheet, send your needs through requirements.