CHEF! September 16, 2026 CHEF! Day 4 Iteration 31

Dish Racks Go to the Cooks

Clean plates now live in portable dish racks of 10. The dishwasher fills a rack at the sink, and once it's full someone carries the whole rack to a new plating table in the middle of the kitchen, near the cooks. Cooks take their plates there instead of walking to the sink.
Who carries a rack follows the Owner's order: the busboy if he's free, otherwise the dishwasher, otherwise a cook. When a rack at the plating table is empty, someone carries it back to the sink for refilling.
While there's no rack at the sink, the dishwasher waits with his clean plates ("WAITING FOR AN EMPTY DISH RACK"). If the cooks run out of plates, a partly filled rack is carried over early. On Easy, racks still move, but the plating table never runs dry.
It wins back most of what Iteration 30 cost. Over 10 games of 15 minutes each, a default game now serves about 54 guests and loses about 14% of them. Before this change it served 42 and lost 36%. Cooks now spend about 212 seconds per game fetching plates, down from 558.
The racks show their plates, and a rack being carried is drawn in the carrier's hands.
In the screenshots, 079 (before) shows a cook walking the length of the kitchen for a plate. 078 (after) shows the busboy carrying a rack while a cook brings a plate back from the plating table.
The animated clip (117) was recorded on the v0.0.37 build itself: the busboy (ringed) returns an empty rack to the sink, carries a full one to the plating table, and cooks walk over to take plates.