Summer staff gone: should the restaurant change its cylinders?

Dénia has been a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy since December 2015, and the number of kitchens in the town reflects it. So does the summer: extra staff taken on for the season, opening and closing shifts shared out, keys handed over at the start of July and not always collected at the end.

By the autumn, a restaurant can have more keys in circulation than it has people. Here is a way to decide what to do about it.

Start with a count

List every key you know about, by door:

• the front door or shopfront;
• the back or kitchen door;
• the store room and any cold-room area;
• the office, and the safe if it has a key;
• the shutter.

Next to each, write who has one now. Then write who had one during the summer.

Then sort the doors

Not every door needs a new cylinder.

Change these if any key is unaccounted for: the outside doors and the shutter, because they are how somebody gets in; and the office, because that is where the money and the paperwork are.

Probably leave these: internal doors inside a building whose outside doors you have just secured.

Why the cylinder and not the whole lock

On most commercial doors the part that matters is the cylinder, which is what the key operates. Changing it retires every old key at once and leaves the rest of the lock in place. It is quick, and it can be done before you open or on your closing day.

Make next summer easier

• Keep a written list of who holds which key, and have staff sign for them.
• Give seasonal staff only the keys their shift needs.
• Collect keys on the last day, as part of the final pay.

None of this is complicated. It just tends not to happen in the middle of August.