![]() It’s Friday night and three of your staff have called in sick. When this happens, would you ever ask the person who seems the least sick to still come in…just for a couple of hours? It can be tempting for short-staffed restaurants to make such a request, but this can have significant consequences. According to Francine Shaw and Matthew Regusci, food safety experts who host a podcast about the topic, more than 40 percent of restaurant foodborne illness outbreaks are caused by employees coming to work sick. What’s more, Shaw said only about 23 percent of restaurants have written policies in place telling employees not to come to work sick. As flu season approaches again, make sure you and your staff are clear on what symptoms should prevent them from coming to work. Some symptoms are clearer than others. Vomiting and diarrhea are among the clearer ones. But how about a sore throat, mild fever or bad cold? Make sure your policy is clear – and don’t be afraid to tell customers that their order may take a little longer because you’re short-staffed due to illness. Explain that you’re just trying to keep them safe. ![]() Your cutting boards can be sources of contamination if they’re not cleaned and sanitized thoroughly – and according to the material they are made from. Broadly, you need to ensure the boards are scraped free of food particles, washed with warm, soapy water, rinsed, sanitized and then dried – either with a clean cloth or air-dried. The sanitizing step differs by the material of your board. For glass, plastic and stainless steel boards, State Food Safety advises sanitizing in the dishwasher or with an FDA-approved sanitizer for food contact surfaces. Marble boards should be sanitized by hand in a chlorine solution, while wooden boards are best sanitized in a quaternary ammonium-based sanitizer. ![]() Bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat foods triggers about 30 percent of foodborne illnesses in restaurants each year, according to the CDC. In addition to following recommendations for frequent handwashing, using tongs, deli tissue or single-use gloves can provide a useful backstop protecting your restaurant’s food safety record. Just make sure staff follow proper procedures for using, cleaning, and where appropriate, discarding, these items so you can prevent cross-contamination and avoid having staff use these protections in place of regular handwashing. ![]() It doesn’t matter how delicious your food is: If a guest finds a stray hair in their meal, they’re done – and unlikely to return. Beyond the grossness factor, hair can carry pathogens like Staphylococcus bacteria. When training your staff, ensure that any long or face-framing hair is securely pinned back with a tie and/or hat and that facial hair is kept closely shaved or in a net. It’s not simply about keeping long hair from flowing freely – it’s also about preventing it from being a distraction so a person won’t absentmindedly sweep hair away from their face and bring it onto a food surface. ![]() Your soft drinks may be in even greater demand than your food options on hot summer days. But a less-than-clean soda fountain can be an immediate turn-off for guests (not to mention a safety hazard). It’s easy for mildew to collect around soda fountain spouts that aren’t cleaned regularly. What’s more, if you’re allowing guests to serve drinks themselves in an effort to save labor, your staff will need to take care to inspect and clean these machines more often. Do your safety checks ensure that your machines are cleaned in the appropriate ways – and at the right intervals – so they’re serving up a clean pour? ![]() Have your guests shared a food safety concern about your restaurant in an online review? Your response – or lack thereof – can send a loud message to guests about the quality of your food and your commitment to food safety. If you leave several negative reviews unanswered, you may send the message that you don’t care about improving, that you hear this kind of thing so often that it isn’t alarming anymore, or that you’re not interested in making the effort to make things right for your guests. Your negative reviews have power for the bad and for the good. Make sure that you use yours to strengthen guest relationships by showing concern for making a situation better. ![]() While you want the tantalizing smells of your grill to waft out onto the street and draw people in, any mysterious smells coming from your kitchen are far less desirable and could signal a lurking food safety issue. Certain odors that seem a bit off – fishy smells, sewage smells or mustiness, for example – could indicate spoiling or rancid ingredients, poor drainage or a pest infestation. If your kitchen or guest-facing areas don’t pass the smell test, take a closer look at what potential food safety issues may be hiding under the surface. ![]() Sesame, which officially became the ninth major allergen this year, has been causing some unexpected trouble in businesses across the food industry – with difficult consequences for consumers and restaurants alike. The new law around managing sesame requires careful cleaning to prevent cross-contact of foods with and without sesame. But because it can be difficult for restaurants to guarantee the removal of such contamination through this cleaning, many food suppliers have added small amounts of sesame flour to products that did not previously include the allergen. Their aim was to help guests avoid guesswork about the foods they can’t eat, but the result has been more people unwittingly consuming sesame in foods they had previously been able to eat safely. While some restaurant brands have stated that they have removed sesame from products (Jimmy John’s) and not added sesame to products that didn’t already contain it (McDonald’s), many restaurants are finding the new law on sesame difficult to follow – and are leaving allergic consumers confused and frustrated as a result. While we wait for a solution, the restaurants that can manage to navigate the new law without introducing sesame in places where it didn’t exist previously stand to gain some loyal guests: There are currently more than 1.5 million Americans with a sesame allergy. ![]() The first stop for your safety inspector is often the place you don’t want associated with your kitchen in any way: your bathroom. Dirty, littered bathrooms are a major red flag for inspectors – and guests too. If you’re not taking care to tidy these visible areas, why should people trust that you’re adhering to safety and hygiene standards in your kitchen? Indeed, in an interview with Mashed, Angela Anandappa, the founding executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Advanced Sanitation, advises guests to check out a restaurant’s restrooms before they sit down to their meal – and make an educated guess about its food safety based on that experience. If you’re slipping in this area, ensure that your staff check and clean your restrooms at more frequent intervals. Digital tools can help you stay on schedule and identify when problems tend to arise during shifts. ![]() You want your team to attract attention for the quality of food and service they offer – not for the jewelry they are wearing. Jewelry can be a red flag for inspectors and guests alike. Items worn on fingers and wrists can make it more difficult for staff to wash their hands thoroughly and are unlikely to be sanitized sufficiently on their own to meet foodservice safety standards. This increases the potential for jewelry to harbor bacteria and expose food to pathogens or other contaminants. Jewelry may also catch on machinery or other items and accidentally drop into food or pose a safety risk to staff. |
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