Tools in the restaurant industry fall into two categories: actual tangible tools like a meat slicer, knives, can openers and cutting boards. These tools need to be kept in good working order. They simply work better when well maintained. I’ve seen kitchens that have shared knives and I’ve never seen knives taken care of or properly maintained in a shared knife kitchen. A sharp knife is works far better than a dull knife. Buy your own.
And the second set of tools is a set of spreadsheets and schedules that will help you to keep things moving while not spending all of your time trying to keep up with running your business. You can find a list of necessary tools in the blog post “Operations”