Dirty food trays pile up

[scai]

In my kitchen and canteen dirty food trays pile up:
https://i.imgur.com/tBX5JBm.jpg

As you can see I have enough cooks that don't have any other work to do. It is in the middle of the night, next eating time is at 8 am. They don't need to prepare food yet. There are four sinks, all accessible and connected to the water. Yet the cooks just walk in circles without doing anything. They cleaned some of the food trays some hours ago but there are still many dirty food trays left.

[scai]

Could it be that there is no room for the clean food trays to store? Each sink has a stack of 40 clean food trays which seems to be the max. So there seems to be no room left for more clean food trays. How do I ressolve this issue?

[Frazzledragøn the Trustworthy]

I don't know what your other canteens are like, but do they have trays?

Either delete some of the stacks, so they respawn normally, or get more sinks.

[scai]

This is my only canteen. I should probably build a second one.

So far I thought the sinks are only necessary for cleaning food trays. But it seems like they also act as storage for clean food trays.

[Frazzledragøn the Trustworthy]

Your only canteen? I can literally see another one in the bottom left.
Or is it a nursery?

Either way, if that is your only canteen is WAY too small for 180 prisoners.
Serving tables spawn new trays when the clean ones are exhausted, but they don't disappear again, so they keep creating more and more until they pile up.
However, during Eat time the cooks don't clean.
After the eat time they clean and put them back in the serving tables. However, those will be full very quickly and you have leftover trays. That repeats day after day.

So you need more Serving tables, maybe more sinks.

[scai]

Yes, the one in the bottom left is just a nursery.

Thanks for the hints. I'm just creating a second (real) canteen + kitchen and I will try to improve the existing one by adding more serving tables.

[MisterSpock]

this can be normal. i have 1 serving table per 20 prisoners but most food trays lying on the ground:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=761211852

but my food trays are cleaned for some reason. one serving table per 40 inmates is standart

[scai]

I have added a second canteen/kitchen and reworked the first one. So far it looks way better:
https://i.imgur.com/RnuXQ3C.jpg

[scai]

Originally posted by MisterSpock:

this can be normal. i have 1 serving table per 20 prisoners but most food trays lying on the ground

In my case the trays didn't lay on the ground but on the tables in the canteen. I guess that will block prisoners trying to eat there. Not sure why the cooks didn't store the cleaned on the ground or at the serving tables like in your screenshot.

[MisterSpock]

Originally posted by scai:

I have added a second canteen/kitchen and reworked the first one. So far it looks way better:
https://i.imgur.com/RnuXQ3C.jpg

looks better

[uninvitd]

I had this trouble the other day. I changed the regime so they had a minimum of 4 hours between each meal so the cooks had time to clean up then I went through and I dumped all of the stacks of trays by clicking on them then clicking dump. Some tray stacks were 100+ because I had been having trouble for a while before I realised what was happening. Once I gave them heaps of time to clean up then heaps of time to cook the next meal I haven't had a single trouble with food and trays since.