You need to stress the importance of food safety in your establishment to make your employees work toward that goal.
Every restaurant needs to create a culture for the safety of the food they serve. This culture that emphasizes cleanliness, safety, and having protocols followed should be implemented at all times. This culture must be maintained from the leadership at the top to the employees at the grassroots level. You have to ensure that every employee must maintain food safety as a priority, at all shifts and with every meal prepared and served. Some companies follow HACCP steps and help create and maintain food safety management systems for your business. You can check a few out online and see if taking their services is worthwhile. Below are some steps you can practice to encourage and maintain food safety regulations in your restaurant.
Start From The Top
In this case, the business leaders of the business need to set a positive example for the other employees and staff of the restaurant by practicing what they preach. They need to clarify that there will be no compromises with food safety, and you have a zero-tolerance policy for not adhering to the safety guidelines. The owners must emphasize that they are strongly committed to upholding the regulations they have put in food safety.
Explain The Rules To The Employees
The employees will be far more willing to follow the rules when they know why they are set in the first place. You need to explain to them why it is crucial to have specific regulations regarding food safety. They need to know why it is essential to use different platters for cooked meat and raw meat. Why it is dangerous to use the same board to prepare a seafood dish and a poultry dish. Not only does cross-contamination from poultry cause severe illnesses, but someone with shellfish allergies could also be severely affected by eating food that has been handled with shellfish. Once you explain the reasoning behind the rules and the importance of following them, your employees will understand why it is essential to follow the rules. This will make them more willing to comply with the rules.
Provide Adequate Training To Your Staff
Irrespective of when an employee has been working in your company, they all should receive food safety education and training regularly. In this training, you need to stress why food safety is a priority for your business and why it shall continue to be a priority in the future. You need to provide the employees with regular and continuous updates to the food safety protocols and arrange refresher courses for them so that the rules are always top of mind for everyone. You might wish to invest in a food handler certificate for your employees to ensure they hold themselves to the highest safety standards at every step of the food preparation process.
Collect The Proper Equipment
While setting up safety rules, you need to ensure that your commercial kitchen has the required tools to follow those guidelines while preparing and serving the food. Employees must regularly check the food’s temperature, so, to make this easy, there must be calibrated food thermometers present at every workstation. Employees must also keep regular logs containing the foods’ temperature. Also, stock plenty of cutting boards so your employees can use separate cutting boards for prepping allergy-friendly food, raw proteins, and ready-to-eat foods.
Inspect The Food When It Arrives
You need to inspect all food when it arrives at your facility, and if you find any food that is not safe, you will need to take immediate action to correct the situation. Because if a customer gets sick or an inspector finds out, you and your employees might not have a place to call work! The only step here is to refuse that potentially unsafe food right when it arrives. You need to empower your employees so that they can make this important call at the right moment.
Conduct Regular Inspections
It is imperative that you maintain proper sanitary standards in your kitchen, the employees are making no mistakes, and the rules for food safety are being followed. You need to conduct regular inspections to ensure that these things are being maintained. You can also hire third-party inspectors’ services so they can examine how your employees are carrying out their regular tasks. An outside inspector might catch things that could typically slip the eye of someone on the inside. The feedback they provide can be instrumental in avoiding foodborne illnesses and other potential issues.
Minimize Careless Mistakes
Your employees need to be regularly reminded that even a small mistake by them can make a guest fatally ill. They must always keep their hands clean by washing them often. They must not wear their kitchen aprons while they use the washroom, and the same towel must never be used to clean the dirty floor and then the restaurant tables. Many such safety and hygiene standards must be maintained by the staff, leaving zero possibility for mistakes.
Follow And Maintain Protocols For Food Allergy
When the food is prepared and served for a guest who is food-allergic, your employees must practice extra caution by using clean gloves and knives to prepare the food and double-check all the ingredients. The food must be prepped in an allergy-friendly area, and be very careful with the ingredients while garnishing the plate.
Summary
Creating and enforcing a food safety culture isn’t a painstaking process; neither is it time-consuming or complicated. You can easily have your employees embrace a food safety culture by ensuring to follow some of the steps mentioned in the article. Your employees must realize that it is critical to follow the culture focusing on food safety to keep the guests and other employees healthier and safe. I hope you manage and maintain proper rules for food safety and make your business safe and profitable.
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