My brief thoughts about what we’ll need (based on the idea we will be open 7 days a week as we are in Digbeth):
-We need between 3-4 chefs who can take turns to lead each day. I think minimum 3 because otherwise there would be two people working several days in a row.
-we would need 2-3 kitchen crew each day. We could plan to have less people in the kitchen due to it’s size. So let’s say two kitchen crew plus chef each day. 14 shifts to fill per week. If everyone took at least 1 shift a week we could do it with 14 extra people dedicated to that kitchen.
-Drivers - I’m assuming we will need less drivers, again assuming a downscale of ops. Say this kitchen produces only 80-90 meals a day. Scaling down again I would propose 5-6 drivers rather than the 6-7. This means minimum 35 shifts available per week. Many drivers do multiple as it’s a shorter job than kitchen, so let’s say 30 dedicated drivers for this kitchen.
-we should do a check in about which drivers live in south and whether we’d need more drivers on top of what we already have. I think as it’s more local we’d be able to have more cyclists possibly.
-a calculation of which areas exactly will be served by this kitchen and which by the other. this will have to be based on our current orders and their location as well as geography. My current thoughts at a rough estimate about 20-25 of our regulars are in south, so we could shift them to getting meals from this kitchen. We would also take a few from waiting list who are in the area. Most of them are in Sparkhill, Sparkbrook, Selly Oak area. However, I think those are closer to centre and we want to be hitting out as far as Kings Norton. So I would say we let Edgbaston, Sparkbrook fall into the Digbeth kitchen remit. Stirchley, Sparkhill, Selly Oak, Bournville, Cotteridge, Moseley, Kings Heath, Balsall Heath, Hall Green, Frankley could all fall into this kitchen’s remit but we have to be aware of numbers.
-a new backroom will have to be created. On reflection, I think it’s best to make this completely separate to the other kitchen. We’ll need still 3 backroom crew and one support person. That’s 28 shifts a week including the support person. Assuming some people will do 1-2 shifts a week that’s about 14 new people to work on this. Support will need to have a close understanding of the system. I think we can replicate the one we currently use but make sure it’s clear on routific which kitchen is using with tab (I don’t know if it can be done simultaneously with a different set of drivers actually, so this will need to be investigated!!). We can use a separate orders spreadsheet, copying the template from before. We could also have a different phone line or the same one as general and allocate them afterwards based on address.
Extra considerations: equipment available in the kitchen, extra food deliveries needed (where from? increase fareshare order? get food from TRJFP?), more masks and PPE needed, more takeaway boxes needed, storage capacities.
TL;DR we need 61 MINIMUM participants including the chefs to make this work. On our current databse we have about 92. The Digbeth kitchen averages 105 shifts a week, many people do it 2-3 times a week so let’s guess at 70 people not including chefs working on this each week already. Not all the participants can work every week either so we are short as things currently stand.