THE KITCHEN WORKBENCH & ERGONOMICS
“How your cutting board looks is how your mind looks.” (Stevan Paul)
In over 5 years of working with the kitchen workbench concept, hardly any concern has come up as often as the question of ergonomics:
How does it feel to have this array of Containers between you and the actual cutting board, and won’t you get terrible back pain within minutes from constantly bending over?
Since Johannes has always taken the board with him to work in the restaurant kitchen from the very beginning to test it, the answer was always quick and clear: “No, not at all,” because even after tough 16-hour shifts, no more back pain appeared than what is normally the case anyway.
We still found the question justified, so we studied the topic theoretically to have a solid answer ready whenever this question arises.
For this answer, we first examined the processes on a conventional cutting board. We identified work zones, work directions, and problems. Then we did the same with our board and compared our results. The outcome is simple and quite convincing – here is our theory of work zones:
THE CUTTING BOARD & THE WORK ZONES
On a normal cutting board, structured (right-handed) people work quite centered in the middle and store the food they are not currently processing on the left side, while the cut food tends to be on the right. This is because you always hold the food with your left hand and push it to the right with the knife blade after cutting.
Somewhere on the board, there is also a collection spot for a certain amount of waste, which you repeatedly empty into a second, larger waste Container, and a collection spot for cut food that you regularly have to transport by hand into a suitable Container outside the cutting board. So, there is a work direction running from left to right, while the work center is centered in the middle of the board.
Area A (the space between the cook and the work area) is almost completely unused here, as otherwise cut food or waste would constantly fall off the board.
The back half of the workspace is divided into a work area and a storage area for food to be processed, processed food, and waste. Salt, spices, and small ingredients are freely arranged on the countertop in varying layouts. Problems that can arise with this setup are probably familiar to all of us: mixing of cut food and waste due to unclear separation of storage zones; cumbersome and spill-prone manual transport to the pan or other Container; and often an overloaded work area.
THE NEW WAY OF COOKING: INTUITIVE STRUCTURE AND ORDER
The distribution of work zones on our kitchen workbench looks completely different:
While the work zones basically remain the same, the way the zones are distributed on the available workspace fundamentally changes.
The cook naturally stands a bit further away from the board overall, which shifts the work area into the previously unused area (A).
Cut food (A) and waste (C) get fixed assigned zones at the front in the form of Containers – the storage area (D) now extends over the entire back half, followed by a fixed assigned zone (E) for salt, spices & small ingredients in the display rail.
BACK TO THE TOPIC – THE KITCHEN WORKBENCH & ERGONOMICS
If you overlay both images exactly, it becomes clear: the posture is completely identical and does not change at all when working with our board.
The real innovation in working with the board is the use of the previously unused zone (A) between the cook and the work area for storing waste & cut food – an area that was probably largely unused before due to its immediate proximity to the board edge (and thus the kitchen floor).
This reassignment of work zones creates space – on the cutting board itself, by effectively separating the usually fatally overlapping work zones.
And it creates more order – waste is immediately separated from cut food and securely stored in its own Container, the same applies to the cut food, and almost effortlessly the work surface stays clean and tidy without extra effort.
The Container system integrates almost imperceptibly into existing work processes and feels so natural to use that it is actually easier to include it in the workflow than not to use it.
FOOD – PREPARED WITH OUR BOARD – TASTES BETTER!
This claim is of course a bit cheeky and deliberately provocative – but basically applies:
The less energy you have to put into logistical processes, the more energy and love can be invested in the overall experience of “food” – that is, tasting, plating, serving, and relaxed entertaining of guests – which is likely to lead directly to better results on the table & plate and memorable evenings.
So even if there is only 5% truth in this claim – can you expect more from a kitchen tool?
