My opinion on this matter could perhaps be summed up by a comparison of management styles. Let me illustrate with an example from my brief experience.
My father owns and runs a small business machine shop, and could be loosely compared to the chef you describe. He walks around and oversees all the production and supporting operations. He was never interested in documenting his processes. There is no procedure for sharpening a form tool, and there is no procedure for centering a cutoff. Why would he write documents that would never be read (assuming they can read) when he could get the work accomplished with shouting and excitability?
He didn't carry a cleaver and a cook's knife, but he had a checkbook and a foul mood on him.
The secretary of this business could be compared to the maitre'd, who is extremely polite to all the customers and visitors and quick to correct any transgressions by staff. This person micro-manages control of the purchasing, accounts, production schedule, and payroll. There is a minimum of documentation associated with her work as well. There are no work instructions for purchasing raw materials, and there is no redundancy in her position.
However, there are documents that are necessary, at a bare minimum, to accomplish the mission of the business. Setup sheets for machines are messy and terrible to read, but contain the required information. Material is labelled clearly, and calibrated instruments all have due date stickers.
In retrospect, a Denny's restaurant franchise is probably better managed, and generates more documentation than the above mentioned, ISO 9001:2000 machine shop.
The difference is that Denny's is a serious business.
The machine shop was at a size threshold where the traditional figurehead management of the owner/operator could just keep up with operations. It was never intended to be a serious business and has never gotten out of the micromanaging control of the two or three people who have ever been in charge.
For an organization to grow beyond this threshold, which 200 tables in a restaurant would far exceed, it's necessary to have controlled conditions. Nothing needs to be too regimented, but the processes must be formalized, documented, and then improved.
This is a great discussion, and I'm glad you picked up on it. I would like to look into some details that are on my mind, such as if a dish or a recipe requires design controls, if cooking is a production or service provision, and whether or not ISO 9001:2000 would help avoid the common mistakes and pitfalls that drive new restaurants out of business.
Since I have seen ISO 9001:2000 agree with the machine shop example, I can say that it is a flexible standard. There are as many ways to accomplish things as you can dream of.
Of course, I hold the pure premise that ISO 9001:2000 is as refined a management standard as could be drafted, and that if it is properly applied will provide the framework of success for any organization and for some things that you would not call an organization. I admire the standard and believe it is an important and new derivitive of progress in society.
Probably, a paradigm shift to service provision would shed light on the application of ISO 9001:2000 to a restaurant. I still work in machine shops, so I am not really capable of that.
pldey42 said:
If there's a bar, I'll offer to get that organised. I'll work for
beer!
Cheers to that! Haha.
Seems that wages is not important to anybody else, ore that wages are depressing all over the world 
