Example Achievement Log for a Chef

A year in the life of a Chef's log

• Feb - achievement: Launched winter tasting menu at The Laurels; six dishes, with duck confit reducing food cost on that plate from £8.40 to £6.20 and plates per night up 23% to 147. Ran solid.
• Mar - feedback: David (head of group) said in the kitchen meeting: 'the duck dish is exactly the kind of thing I want to see, cost smart and people actually want to order it.' Validation I needed.
• Apr - task: Took over supplier ordering for The Laurels after Marcus left. First month I missed the veg delivery window and had to scramble for beetroot mid-service. Got the schedule sorted after that.
• Apr - achievement: Renegotiated fish contract with Hartley's; moved to 48-hour turnaround stock and cut per-kilo cost 12% without dropping quality. May supplier bill came in £340 under forecast.
• Jun - task: Ran kitchen for both The Laurels and The Rose most weekends when head Chefs were on leave. Double covers, one person managing expediting and stations. Exhausting but no complaints.
• Jul - feedback: Yuki (commis) told me after service: 'when you're in the kitchen the whole brigade feels calmer, you don't make it scary.' Small thing but it mattered.
• Jul - achievement: August service on the 19th fell apart; ordered wrong fish volumes, dropped stock on spinach, one walk-out at table five. Reviewed what went wrong that night with the full brigade and changed our ordering checklist.
• Sep - achievement: Summer menu closeout: analysed 14 weeks of sales data, identified that the halibut dish at £34 was only hit 62% nights but cost £11 to make. Pulled it, replaced with mackerel at £16, now 81% attachment. Food cost fell 2.3%.
• Oct - task: Mentored Felix (commis) from July to October through plating standards, knife work, and reading tickets. He moved to commis I at The Rose; they asked for him specifically.
• Oct - achievement: Created and costed autumn à la carte for both sites; eight new dishes launched 1 Nov. Early read: covers up 14% week-on-week, and the beef and walnut velouté is 34% of dessert covers.
• Dec - feedback: Stephanie from front-of-house told me: 'your menu actually works, people don't come back with the usual complaints, it's refreshing.' She hears everything from guests.

What makes a strong entry

How this becomes your review in November

This year I've been focused on making the menu work as an actual business, not just as food. The winter duck dish at The Laurels cut that plate cost from £8.40 to £6.20 while cover count jumped 23%, and when I reviewed summer sales data I pulled the underperforming halibut and replaced it with a mackerel dish that moved food cost down 2.3% across the site. On the supplier side, renegotiating fish with Hartley's alone brought May in £340 under forecast, and I've also been managing double covers on weekends across both kitchens while mentoring commis through to promotion. I know the August 19th service fell apart and I learned hard from that, but building the ordering checklist that came after meant we didn't repeat it.

Starting your own log

Don't try to reconstruct a year you have already had. Start from today, one line whenever something happens, and let it build. The Perform Review Achievement Log does this for you and can capture wins straight from Slack, and how to start an achievement log covers the wider playbook.

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