When a food delivery order leaves your restaurant, how confident are you about being able to keep that food safe en route to your customers? A new survey found that nearly 30 percent of food delivery app workers sample food they are delivering – and even more than that are tempted to try. To alert customers that someone has tampered with their food, operators are increasingly using tamper-evident labels. A QSR Magazine report advises using ones that will adhere to the full range of your packaging materials and also have security slits that tear if someone tampers with the label. These labels are a good place to market your food safety values, so they’re also a good place to feature your company logo, website or other identifying information.
This summer, the Arkansas Department of Health advised people who had eaten at a specific McDonald’s to get vaccinated for Hepatitis A. This followed news that a McDonald’s employee had tested positive for the virus, which has infected nearly 400 people in Arkansas since early last year, Delish reports. When these events occur, expect the food safety landscape to shift – and put restaurant operators on the defensive. As of this writing, Detroit’s Public Health and Safety Committee was in the process of proposing an ordinance to require restaurants to use color-coded signs (as opposed to letter grades) to clarify their standing with the city’s health department, Food Safety News reports. A Hepatitis A outbreak in Detroit motivated the action, which is intended to both push operators to improve results and provide greater transparency to the public about a restaurant’s food safety record. The model for the color-coded system is Columbus, Ohio, which has a four-tiered system to classify a restaurant’s standing with the health department: Green, yellow, white and red signs announce whether a restaurant has passed inspection and meets the city’s standard, is closed based on the order of local health department officials, or falls somewhere in between.
After a couple of tough years following outbreaks of E.coli and Norovirus linked to its brand, Chipotle seems to be riding high, generating strong results in the previous five quarters and most recently, surpassing analyst forecasts with same-store growth of 10 percent. Having to adjust your food safety practices for the sake of your brand’s survival can lead to some progressive tactics. Brian Niccol, who took over as Chipotle’s chief executive in 2018, told the New York Times that the company now has a provision ensuring employees get paid when they call in sick, a zero-tolerance policy on asking sick people to work, and a new bonus program designed to minimize (or at least stave off) turnover. Employees who meet set performance benchmarks can earn the equivalent of an extra month’s pay over the course of a year.
Have pests become a problem for you this summer? Take extra care with garbage disposal to avoid becoming a haven for them (or encouraging them to make a longer-term home with you once the weather starts cooling). Statefoodsafety.com suggests reminding staff to avoid leaving garbage in places or for long periods where pests can access them easily. That means taking full trash bags to the dumpster immediately — not leaving them in and around your establishment — and emptying bins before they overflow. Use strong plastic liners, clean bins regularly so there are no spills or crumbs left to attract pests, and keep garbage bin and dumpster lids closed securely when not disposing of garbage.
Last year, there were 14 severe weather and climate events that the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information says cost $1 billion or more. There have been six such events already this year. Since restaurants can be impacted by severe weather events both directly and indirectly, it pays to make sure you have sufficient insurance protection in place as part of your disaster preparedness plan — not to mention your day-to-day operating plan. Your insurance cover needs to consider your business type, geographic region and the outcome of the risk assessment you conduct to identify your restaurant’s greatest vulnerabilities. Your commercial property insurance policy, for example, likely will not cover any vehicles your restaurant operates or protect against flood damage your business sustains during a hurricane. And even if your property or vehicles make it through a severe weather event unscathed, toppled trees or flooding on your street could make it impossible for you to get food to customers. Make sure you review your insurance policies for commercial property, flood protection and business interruption to make sure you’re not leaving your business exposed. Purchasing insurance cover from companies that specialize in the restaurant industry can help. Just make sure you read the fine print carefully — especially on bundled packages that offer broader cover for a lower total price but may exclude specific risks you need to protect against.
Consumers demand fresh food — but that can lead to food safety challenges, especially when fresh produce is a key feature of your menu. But there are steps you can take to protect the safety of your food supply and enhance safety protocol within your restaurant. As Restaurant Dive reports, a string of romaine lettuce contamination incidents led Chipotle’s new CEO, Brian Niccol, to attack food safety from several angles. First, the brand developed a field leadership team of food safety managers. They oversee five to 10 restaurants and train managers how to run a restaurant with an emphasis on food safety. The company also revamped its supply chain team, introduced quarterly food safety training, developed a “focus prep” team to limit the number of people preparing food, and transitioned more cooking tasks to a central kitchen where food safety could be more closely monitored. Finally, they focused on retaining employees so that food safety knowledge had a better chance of accumulating on staff. The efforts appear to be turning results around for the brand, which generated revenue gains of nearly 9 percent last year, according to earnings data.
Making do with less-than-adequate kitchen equipment can lead to a safety issue for your staff and guests, impact your restaurant’s performance and consume excess energy. Does any of your equipment require frequent servicing or parts replacement? Does your chef have to adapt his or her use of equipment to avoid injury? Is there equipment that can save space in your kitchen by accomplishing multiple tasks — or save on energy? (For example, a piece of kitchen equipment like a countertop food steamer that uses less water than a basic model could potentially save you tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the product.) Checking your tools against the NSF’s Certified Food Equipment list can help you identify effective and efficient replacements of kitchen equipment and tools that aren’t serving you as well as they could.
It’s the season for grabbing some prepared food to go, then enjoying it at summer picnics and other outdoor events. If you offer grab-and-go foods, double check that you’re following food safety procedures so you can avoid contamination hazards and other safety risks. Daymark Safety Systems suggests operators follow several steps to protect grab-and-go storage areas. Regularly clean any doors, shelves, machine dispensing areas and lights that are part of your food displays. If you have any automated kiosks with touchpads, clean and also disinfect those high-touch areas to kill any contaminants — you may need to leave the disinfectant on the surface for a few minutes before wiping it away. Check regularly for spills on the floor and within your display, and consider using an absorbent pad or mat to reduce the risk of slips when spills occur. Clean floors at least once a day, and ensure trash and recycling bins are cleaned inside and out and don’t become overfilled.
You stick to strict cleaning procedures and take steps to avoid the cross-contamination of foods, but how much do you know about the quality of the air in your facility? You may have excess dust accumulating in the air that can contaminate food, or moisture from ovens that can generate condensation and lead to mold. Further, the simple act of cooking can make indoor air as dangerous to breathe as smog, according to new research from HomeChem. Asthma or other respiratory ailments on your kitchen team can signal you have a problem, but you can improve air quality going forward by maintaining appliances and ventilation units routinely, having your air tested for chemical or biological pollutants, replacing old cookware with models that are less likely to contaminate the air, and using natural building materials and decorative elements in your restaurant.
Placing a few bits of information on your TCS food storage bins can have a range of benefits: It can help you avoid serving expired product that could potentially lead to illness, give you a heads-up about when you’ll need to offer specials to get rid of excess items, save you money, and demonstrate to your health inspector that you’re managing your operation well. Upserve suggests you use a food rotation label that clearly lists the type of food being stored, the date it was prepared and added to the storage area, and the date it will expire. Then all it takes is a quick scan to make sure the first bin in is also the first one out.
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