Should Your Kitchen Be Closed at Night?

There is a big debate among hosteliers as to whether or not they should close their community kitchen in the late hours of the night. There is no right answer. There are some valid and concerning points on both sides, and each hostel should experiment a bit to find out what is right for their business. Those in favor of closing the kitchen have years of experience and understand the risks involved with keeping it open. Their points mostly revolve around the notion that a 24-hour open kitchen welcomes the drunken chef. The drunken chef is known to cook with the wrong kitchenware, cook other people's food, make noise even when entertaining him/herself, and neglect any and all cleaning, often with no recollection that it was them until presented with the evidence. A drunken chef has been known to forget that the cooking process has started, leaving a frozen pizza to become a brick of charcoal that awakens everyone in the building and summons the fire brigade. Here you can easily see how making a few people happy can ruin the nights of many more. Advocates for the open kitchen, or as some people call them, kitchen anarchists, feel that answering customer demand can lead to good reviews and do not want to burden their guests with rules. They believe that hostels should have no right to block access to people's own food and drink, and babysitting is part of the night receptionist's job.

So obviously, this post leans towards closing the kitchen, but not completely. Typically, smaller hostels can pull off a 24-hour kitchen because the staff are so closely involved with the guests and can monitor them without overwhelming the night shift. This could work for hostels with fewer than 40 beds. Medium hostels can manage it as long as their night staff are attentive and there is adequate CCTV, say up to 80 beds. However, a 24-hour kitchen will be difficult to maintain with more beds than that, and you are better off closing the doors. The best way to do so is to have clearly posted rules alerting everyone of the kitchen closing hours. Guests will then work their way around it, keeping a snack and a bottle of water in their room. Staff should have the ability to open the kitchen for exceptional circumstances, such as medical emergencies and group preparations. Having the kitchen closed gives you ample time to do a good cleaning job and, more importantly, tells the drunken would-be chef to head to McDonald's instead.

So before you decide, ask yourself the following questions and build a policy around the answers. Just remember, nothing is set in stone, and the best policies evolve over time.

• Do you often find a dirty kitchen in the AM?

• Are a few guests ruining it for the rest by being loud?

• Are many of your guests workers coming in from a late shift, such as after restaurant closing times?

• Do you allow guests to take food into their rooms?

• Do guests have access to snacks even when not in the kitchen, such as from a vending machine or a vendor close by?

• Is it worth paying for two night employees—one to man the desk, security, and night audit, and the other to constantly clean the kitchen?

• How upset would your guests really be if the kitchen was closed?