Your Daily Kitchen Workflow

A cooking day, hour by hour.

Everything on a MEHKO cooking day happens in one day: shop or pull from storage, cook, hold, hand off, clean, log. Nothing carries to tomorrow. A fixed routine is what makes that possible without panic. Adjust the times to your menu and your SOP.

The day before

• Confirm orders. Count meals. Stop at your daily limit.
• Check the fridge, freezer, and pantry against the shopping list.
• Shop for what is missing. Cold items straight into the fridge, raw meat on the bottom shelf.
• Thaw tonight what you need tomorrow — in the fridge, not on the counter.
• Set out containers, lids, bags, labels, order slips.
• Mix nothing. Marinate nothing. Same-day rule.

Cooking day (example: 30 lunches, pickup 11–1)

Time

What

6:30

Wash hands. Mix sanitizer bucket, check with a test strip. Wipe counters. Fridge thermometer check: 41°F or below.

7:00

Start the long items: broth, braise, rice for soy milk. Kids and pets out of the kitchen from here on.

8:00

Prep vegetables, wrap dumplings, portion proteins. Raw meat last, then wash hands and sanitize the board.

9:30

Cook rice. Start batches of the main dishes. Probe everything: chicken 165°F, pork 145°F, ground meat 155°F.

10:30

Hot food into hot holding (135°F or above). Cold items into the fridge. Line up containers by order slip.

10:45

Pack the first pickups. Label each bag with the name and time. Hot bag for deliveries.

11:00–1:00

Hand-off at the door. Stagger customers ten minutes apart. Log each meal as it goes out.

1:00

Last pickup. Leftovers to the trash or food bank. Nothing is saved.

1:15

Wash, rinse, sanitize, air-dry. Dishwasher on sanitize cycle. Wipe and sanitize surfaces. Grease into the jar. Trash out.

2:00

Log totals: meals today, meals this week, sales, tax collected. Note what ran out, what was left over.

Rules that shape the day

• Wash hands: at the start, after raw meat, after the bathroom, after your phone, between tasks.
• Probe thermometer, sanitized between uses. Do not guess doneness.
• Hot food at 135°F or above until it leaves. Cold at 41°F or below.
• No personal cooking during production. Family lunch is a MEHKO meal or something from the fridge.
• Everything cooked, served, or delivered today. Sauces included.

Keep it small

Three to five dishes, two or three days a week, is a full routine for one person. Add a dish or a day only after the current ones run smoothly. Speed comes from repetition, not from more.