Short-staffed? Who isn’t? While being shorthanded can lead to food preparation mistakes and safety problems, you can take steps to minimize your risk. On a regular basis, review what tasks are taking the most time and attention from your staff. Consider how to automate and/or simplify them with such helpers as precise ingredient dispensers; pre-measured, -cut and -seasoned ingredients; probes that monitor the functioning of appliances and notify staff of problems; digitized food safety logging; and digitized ordering that prompts guests to alert back-of-house staff to an allergy. Restaurant operators have had to get creative in developing new streams of income in recent years – but the food safety practices that govern one area of the business may not sufficiently cover another. In fact, the recent Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences' Annual Meeting and Science Symposium addressed food safety concerns associated with the rise of e-commerce, ghost kitchens, and delivery in food retail. For example, there are hundreds of vendors offering perishable meat products across the U.S., yet no federal regulatory oversight of these vendors and few barriers to entry for online meat and seafood vendors. A Food Safety Magazine report said consumers’ high level of trust many times does not correspond with the food safety precautions taken by the companies used for deliveries. Ghost kitchens, which often handles a wider range of cuisines and ingredients than an individual restaurant would, require extra vigilance when it comes to preventing cross-contamination. As you build new income streams into your business, how are you ensuring that the food safety culture you have developed in your restaurant also infuses these new paths between you and your customer? Food safety maintenance can be a thankless job – noticed most frequently after an inspection has revealed problems or a guest has become ill. September is Food Safety Education Month. As it approaches, plan to leverage the occasion to reinforce your safety procedures with your staff in a positive way. Consider having a safety quiz or a monthly/weekly on-the-spot prize for employees observed to be using key safety practices. Challenge employees to complete tasks that earn them food safety raffle tickets over the course of the month, with a prize drawing at the end. By making food safety more fun and less punitive, you may be able to set your business – and staff – on a positive trajectory when it comes to applying best practices. Your food safety program can’t be static. Evolving health risks, new staff and changing employee roles all make it important for restaurants to regularly track their adherence to – and communication of – their food safety procedures. Having an understanding of how you’re performing between inspections can help you adjust your training practices and even give you an opportunity to improve employee engagement by rewarding those who uphold your best practices (not simply penalizing those responsible after a food safety incident occurs). Steritech developed a quiz to help operators get a snapshot of how they are performing when it comes to food safety. It may serve as an extra tool to help you monitor what you do well and where you have room to improve. If you’re still using manual checklists to manage food safety tasks, making the switch to digital can provide benefits in multiple areas. Beyond just helping you ensure tasks are completed, digital checklists can provide labor-saving assistance at scale – allowing you to view evidence of task completion across multiple locations at once, while also helping you predict food safety threats remotely. A Food Safety Tech report says that if a manager notes that the tables in the dining room are overdue to be cleaned, for example, they can alert employees to the problem and prompt action – something likely to be missed if that task were to be tracked manually. We’re all trying to do more with fewer resources right now. But that doesn’t apply to your marinades. When training new staff, ensure they understand how to handle marinades safely – including always marinating in the refrigerator and most importantly, avoiding the repurposing of marinades for other animal proteins or vegetables. A recent U.S. Foods report advises, discard fresh marinades after one day and pre-packaged marinades by the expiration date – and in the event you use any reduced-oxygen packaging, ensure you have a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point plan to support it. When Covid hit and we learned more about how the virus was transmitted, more operators began to experiment with the use of UV-C lights used to kill the airborne virus and make indoor dining feel like a safer option during outbreaks. The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) recently began using a system of UV-C germicidal bulbs at its four locations in response to Covid. In a recent FastCasual webinar, "Emerging Trends in Restaurant Health,” David Behnke from the CIA discussed the safety benefits he has seen from the technology. The use of these lights could have the side benefit of reducing food waste as well. A decade ago, Middleby Bluezone, the supplier of the UV-C model used by the CIA, used this technology to address the challenge of getting fresh produce to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It placed one of its UV-C light models in shipping containers to the Middle East to destroy mold and bacteria en route, enabling the technology to extend the shelf life of produce. Even before summer hit, many areas of the country experienced surprising spikes in temperature this year. As you prepare for outdoor events this summer, take extra precautions with food safety. An especially warm day will shrink the window of time when foods remain safe to consume. Any perishable foods can be left out for only an hour in 90-degree heat and other items should only sit out for two hours. When transporting food, ensure you’re able to keep cold foods at 40°F and hot foods above 140°F, and make additional provisions to keep foods cold or hot if the weather is likely to pose a challenge. Personal protective equipment has become a common sight in restaurants in the Covid era – and it serves an important purpose. However, the gloves and tongs your team use to distance themselves from foods may serve to make contamination less front-of-mind in the midst of a hectic shift. After all, if you have a glove between your hand and the raw chicken you’re preparing, you may be more likely to mindlessly touch a surface that can then be contaminated. Make sure your kitchen staff change gloves between tasks, wash hands frequently with soapy running water, and sanitize food preparation surfaces routinely to minimize the risk of spreading contaminants around your kitchen without knowing it. At a time when you’re likely working with a smaller staff and/or onboarding new employees on a regular basis, it’s especially important to be able to deliver food safety training that keeps pace with a wide range of training needs. Technology is of critical help here. Are you currently able to use digital tools to provide your team with short training videos or on-demand guidance from any device – as well as track employees’ progress in meeting training objectives? Doing so is an efficient way to ensure you stay in compliance with regulations and protect food safety. Ask Team Four for help in using technology to deliver targeted training that helps protect your food safety program. |
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