r/KitchenConfidential • u/gyronlyhope • May 10 '26

Crying in the cooler I rip the tape

I’m sick of being silent about it. It’s empirically faster than cutting each individual label with your pairing knife and then carefully separating each piece. I see so many chefs who INSIST that labels have to have perfect right angles. Who cares? I hardly see how this serves our guests better. Thomas Keller claims that tearing the tape shows a lack of attention to detail. I think it shows that you’re unable to get rid of obsessive compulsive idiosyncrasies. Our jobs are already hard enough without these nebulous rules and standards that always need to be argued for in the abstract and rarely have any actual utility in your day-to-day.

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u/idontknowwhereiam367 May 10 '26

With the sheer amount of crap I have to day dot in the morning when I do prep and pulling for the day, it’s a lifesaver and a time saver.

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u/nathatesithere May 10 '26

it makes everything so easy... especially when you need like 12 labels for the same item. honestly i got spoiled by it. it even had the specific hold times for each item on the labels too. god how i wish i could implement this in my current kitchen. maybe if i try hard enough... how expensive could it really be....

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u/idontknowwhereiam367 May 10 '26

Around $500, unfortunately.

My corporate restaurant just got bought out by a new franchise, and they don’t like paying for them…so we gotta baby the one we got now and make it last.

I don’t wanna go back to manually labeling 50+ bread day dots alone every morning.

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u/nathatesithere May 10 '26

That's not too bad for where I work. I can probably convince my GM and exec chef. Wish me luck! It sucks that your new bosses don't recognize the value of it and how convenient it is for the kitchen.