A Fresh Start: Recommitting Yourself and Your Business to Food Safety in 2024
As we get settled into the new year and leave the hustle and bustle of the holiday season behind, it is the perfect time for reflection and improvement. Everyone is focused on self-improvement and how they can get ahead in the new year. While it is a great time to do so, don’t forget about your business goals, too. For foodservice operators and managers, hopefully this means reevaluating and recommitting to food safety, one of the cornerstones of a successful food business.
The importance of maintaining these high standards and establishing the food safety culture that we often talk about in this blog cannot be overstated. It ensures the well-being of your customers and employees and safeguards the reputation and success of your business. Here are some tips to help you recommit yourself and your foodservice operation to food safety in the new year.
- Food Safety Training: Offer the opportunity for your employees to attend food safety training on a regular basis. I always point out to managers that food safety knowledge is not the end all and be all – meaning that it will not change employee behavior per se, but employees cannot follow the correct food safety practice if they simply are uneducated and don’t know what should be done. Ensure employees who are involved in food handling and preparation have the certifications necessary for your location. Most jurisdictions follow the food code, which doesn’t mandate certification (you could demonstrate food safety knowledge on-site at the time of inspection), but certification programs are designed to ensure that employees learned the basics of food safety and are able to demonstrate it on a certification exam. This also ensures they are updated on industry standards.
Everyone is focused on self-improvement and how they can get ahead in the new year. …hopefully this means reevaluating and recommitting to food safety, one of the cornerstones of a successful food business.
- Enhanced Sanitation Practices: Start the new year with a thorough deep cleaning of your kitchen and food preparation areas. Pay attention to often overlooked areas, such as equipment surfaces, ventilation systems, and storage spaces. While you are working through the deep cleaning, update your cleaning SOPs and make sure your cleaning schedule has been updated to reflect changes in cleaning protocols, chemicals, any changes to equipment and/or facilities.
- Focus on Good Habits: Which good habit do you want to focus on? While it doesn’t matter to me, you might consider focusing on one of the top three issues that cause foodborne illnesses: personal hygiene, cross contamination, or temperature control. Pick one of these and make it your focus for the first part of the year. We call these keystone habits, and we find that changing or improving upon these keystone habits will help change your entire food safety culture. Will it be taking end-point cooking temperatures? Improving handwashing frequency and methods? Ensuring employees wash and sanitize prep tables when they start their job for the day? While the practice itself is important, what is more important is demonstrating to employees your commitment to food safety and starting to change bad behaviors, breaking old habits and introducing new, improved habits.
- Regular Inspections and Audits: This doesn’t mean you need to hire a consulting company to come in and do an audit, but plan for internal audits and rotate the responsibility among your management team. Evaluate how effective your current practices are, identify areas in which you and your employees can improve, and develop action plans to address those issue. Plus, if you don’t monitor them, how will you be able to ensure your new habits are starting to take hold?
Recommitting to food safety is not just a resolution; it’s a commitment to the health and safety of your customers, staff, and business. By investing time, resources, and energy into ensuring that your foodservice operation adheres to the highest food safety standards, you set the stage for a successful and thriving year ahead. Make 2024 the year your commitment to food safety sets your establishment apart. Risk Nothing.
Getting Started with Building the Infrastructure
Hopefully in our first January blog, we convinced you of the importance of establishing an infrastructure within your operation to support a safe food culture. So, how does one go about doing this? Well, like any major project, break it into small bites. In our opinion, having a written guide for employees that documents expectations related to food safety basics of employee health and hygiene, temperature controls, and cleaning and sanitizing is the first step. Having this documentation serves as a reference for training and helps fulfill the mission of most foodservice operators which is to serve safe, quality food.
Food Safety Resolutions for the New Year
Finally, 2020 is in our rearview mirror and we can all turn the page to 2021! Resolutions for the new year might be more of the same from prior years (lose weight, exercise more, less screen time, etc.) OR you may have identified new practices to implement in your operation. If the latter, likely goals included some practices related to food safety – especially given the turmoil of 2020 and heightened concern by customers. It is our philosophy that attention to safe food handling practices is a win-win for any operation because of the direct relationship between food safety and food quality, which in turn leads to customer satisfaction. This past year has also demonstrated that attention to safety can affect the bottom line. Thus, the topic of our first SafeBites webinar for 2021 is on the topic of the return on investment of food safety, it is scheduled for January 20, so register now and please plan to attend.
To Toss or Not to Toss? That is the question.
Our first blog for the month emphasized the basic safe food practices needed to keep you and your guests healthy (and happy!), especially during these times of COVID. The impact of foodborne illness can range from an uncomfortable few days to hospitalization or death. Foodborne illness IS preventable and the steps taken to keep food safe also maintain quality of food, and ultimately profitability. Think of attention to food safety as part of quality control and a win-win business strategy. Knowledge about food safety can be helpful when controlling costs as making wise decisions when determining the fate of unserved food can affect the bottom line.
Holiday Food Safety Controls
In case you have not noticed - the holidays are here! We have seen store decorations up since mid-September and early bird deals advertised for several weeks, stretching the typical Black Friday deals throughout the month as retailers strive to ensure market share, while following increasingly stringent mandates for physical distancing
