Even if your staff is careful about cleaning and sanitizing food preparation surfaces, poor personal hygiene can drag down your restaurant’s food safety – or at least your guests’ perception of it. Transferring pathogens from one’s body – particularly hands – to food is the leading cause of foodborne-illness outbreaks at restaurants, according to the National Restaurant Association. Neglecting personal hygiene significantly increases the chances of transferring harmful pathogens onto food. Soiled uniforms, long hair that isn’t tied back away from the face, untrimmed nails, perspiration and jewelry can all contribute to the problem. Does your employee policy adequately cover personal hygiene practices? Consider fine-tuning standards around laundering uniforms before a shift, where to store soiled items so they don’t come into contact with food, how to keep long hair away from food, what jewelry is acceptable to wear while working, and where personal items should be stored during a shift. Break times that give staff an opportunity to refuel can also help ensure your team members present themselves well in front of guests – particularly in hot weather. Just make sure that any food or drink they consume is kept away from food preparation areas and equipment. And of course, reinforcing frequent and thorough handwashing practices throughout a shift and after breaks is probably the most important thing you can do to support your food safety each day. Preparing food in the warmer months can expose food to conditions that can make it decay more quickly. And even in cases where foods are carefully and consistently refrigerated, foodborne pathogens can still grow – particularly in food like produce and deli meats that are popular options in the summer months. This makes accurate food labeling especially important. However, according to the CDC, one-quarter of restaurants don’t label refrigerated and ready-to-eat foods with dates indicating when the foods are no longer safe to consume. This is more of an issue for independent restaurants than it is for chain restaurants, the agency found. But in the businesses where it is a problem, it’s also common to find labeling discrepancies between when a food was prepared and when it should be discarded. This can mean the difference between exposing guests to foodborne pathogens and not. In your operation, are there clear, consistent practices for labeling foods so that employees can interpret them easily? Further, are all items being stored on a first-in, first-out basis? Accurate food labeling and storage can help busy employees more easily notice, on the spot, when an item needs to be discarded. If recent years are any indication, we’re likely to experience periods of record-setting heat in the coming months — and this can impact food safety from several different directions. A number of foodborne infections, including Salmonella, E. coli and others, peak in the summer months. Research has also found that food recalls increase during the summer. The blackouts that have become more common on sweltering days can further put food at risk — such events put restaurants in the position of having to keep foods chilled during power outages when outdoor temperatures are compounding the problem. Even on hot summer days when you’re not dealing with the issues above, your kitchen team may still struggle to perform at their best when working over hot equipment — particularly if your kitchen isn’t climate-controlled or well ventilated. It’s a good time to assess how all of these potential issues could affect your restaurant, then put some plans in place to help you avoid problems later. Perhaps that means connecting with suppliers with any concerns about tracing and reporting summer food recalls, having a food safety backup plan in place in case you experience a blackout, and adjusting staffing or work protocols to allow for more frequent breaks during the hot season. Despite the rise in real-time, tech-based controls designed to help businesses monitor foodborne illness risks, outbreaks continue to be an issue for foodservice operations. The CDC recorded 519 norovirus outbreaks between August 2023 and January of this year, a sharp rise from the previous year’s numbers, and Salmonella has impacted people across 32 states in recent months. On top of food safety technology that helps foodservice operations monitor protocols and stay alert to problems, old-fashioned food safety practices are just as important. A Food Safety Tech report says this should include thorough, frequent handwashing; proper hand hygiene prior to handling food; and the use of alcohol-based sanitizer as an added precaution – not a substitute – for handwashing. It’s also important to clean and sanitize high-touch surfaces and equipment regularly – and wash and sanitize produce to eliminate contaminants (the recent Salmonella outbreak was linked to cantaloupe and pre-cut fruit products). The report also advises careful handling and proper cooking of seafood, particularly shellfish, and having an employee policy with clear guidelines for managing staff illness, especially regarding when it’s important to avoid handling food or reporting to work. Sixty percent of worker’s compensation claims are the result of slips, falls, strains and burns at work, according to the National Council on Compensation Insurance. Between 2020 and 2021, the council found that among the costliest lost-time claims by cause of injury were burns ($52,161 for each claim) and falls or slips ($49,971 for each claim). Unfortunately, these risks are common in restaurants – and tasks such as managing cooking oil increase risks of both burns and slips or falls. If you’re experiencing losses in these areas, it’s worth conducting an audit of the risks that tend to generate worker’s compensation claims. Addressing them can deliver a ripple of benefits. For example, if you’re still managing your cooking oil using manual processes, automating it can improve staff safety, labor efficiency and food quality, as well as reduce your overall oil usage and expense, according to a new report from Restaurant Dive. The tech-based monitoring that accompanies automated oil management can also help you keep tighter control on your oil quality and costs by alerting you when there are problems. As the weather warms up and your guests are craving the rainbow of local, farm-fresh vegetables you may be offering on your menu, it’s important to take a step back and think about food safety. Vegetables can come across as inherently fresh, clean and appealing to eat right off the vine – especially if they carry labels like “organic” or “sustainably grown,” for example. But that’s a misconception. As food safety professional Doug Powell said in a report from US Foods, “Fresh produce is the biggest source of foodborne illness in the U.S. and North America, and it has been for at least a decade.” Because fresh produce has been responsible for tens of thousands of foodborne illnesses over the past 10 years, it pays to scrutinize the sources of the produce you buy, as well as the food safety practices your suppliers use. That means tracing potential contaminants right down into the soil in which these foods are grown. For example, Powell advises collecting information about the water farmers use for irrigation, if and how they amend their soil to suit crops, and how well they enforce hand-washing practices. If your business is struggling with hiring and retaining staff, it may also be struggling to carry out food safety training – or to review any processes that don’t directly support your compliance with local and state regulations. But unfortunately, a restaurant may suffer for this in the long term if employees are injured on the job or if the business faces a steep insurance claim that could have been prevented by having a strong safety culture. Your restaurant’s commitment to safety should be so woven through its fabric that senior leaders talk about it regularly and every new hire is aware of your approach before they even start their job. To make it easier to share safety knowledge and encourage retention, automate what you can – through the use of video training, gamification and digital tools that guide staff through preparation tasks that protect safety. Then take steps to broaden the knowledge of your team through regular cross-training to help fill gaps. Give your more senior staff mentoring roles with newer staff. Above all, explain the why behind why you perform certain safety practices so that tasks are less likely to fall through the cracks as you manage the other demands of your business. If your kitchen staff is smaller than it once was – or it lacks the culinary skill to prepare your menu items from scratch – you’re likely weaving more prepared foods into your inventory right now. But beyond saving labor hours, these ingredients are likely to deliver food safety benefits too. Pre-cooked ingredients – like cooked, smoked beef that simply needs reheating, for example – can help a young team sidestep concerns about the safe preparation of a protein. Other speed-scratch items can help you prevent cuts and burns. There is a wide and growing array of these ingredients available at various stages of preparation, whether you need items pre-cut, pre-marinated, or pre-cooked. As Stacey Kincaid, vice president of product development and innovation for US Foods, told Restaurant Business recently, “Labor-saving products are in high demand, as are versatile products that can be used across the menu. So, once you train a team member on one product or ingredient, you don’t have to retrain.” That means you’re able to redistribute your training hours in new ways – like by cross-training people on a range of tasks that will support your team during a shift when you’re often shorthanded, training a new employee who needs one-on-one support, or providing in-depth safety training to the team. Meet your need for clean, plentiful ice The warmer months are coming – and as various regions of the country experience sweltering temperatures more often, guests will be craving icy beverages and cold foods from your business. You will need a reliable supply of ice to ensure you can meet the demands of warm weather. Now is a good time to make sure you’re ready to do so safely. First, assess how well your ice machine will be able to handle your anticipated needs for ice in the months ahead. What does your historical guest data (as well as any predictive data you can access) tell you about your likely needs for chilled beverages and food? If you have an older ice machine, how can you accommodate any of its limitations through pre-emptive service or revised workflows during a shift? While bacteria and mold can grow in an ice machine regardless of the temperature outside, heavier use of these machines in warm weather requires more frequent cleaning and sanitization – something that may not be happening as often as it should. Your employee training procedures can ensure this task stays on track, while also helping your staff use your ice machine in ways that limit the risk of cross-contamination. How tech can take safety, quality and compliance concerns off your plate If you’re managing a continuous cycle of having to do more with less – like juggling more work across a smaller crew, for example, or having to conduct more onboarding training with fewer longtime staff on your roster – it can be easy for your food safety and quality to slip through the cracks. Fortunately, tech tools can help you ensure you’re upholding key standards regardless of what’s happening and which employees are staffed during a shift. As Restaurant Technology News reported recently, tech-driven support can include everything from prompts to wash hands during busy periods to reminders about completing compliance tasks across multiple locations. Looking at your operation, where are manual processes still in use? Where do you see your standards slipping – or see potential for that to happen? Looking externally, do all of your suppliers share your commitment to safety and have mechanisms in place to protect it, or is there room to make changes for the better? When automated tools are in place, you’re able to manage business more effectively with fewer people and you also stand to make your employees’ jobs a little easier, which can help with morale and retention. |
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