Dry Food Storage – How Vital is it to Food Safety?
Common in many food safety training classes is a rich discussion about many topics – produce storage temperatures, the temperature at which eggs should be delivered, how to wash hands, how to properly calibrate a thermometer. One thing we often don’t talk about is the importance of proper dry storage. I remember going through our food safety inspection at the restaurants and the inspector would look at it – but it was really a superficial glance at the area.
If you look at many foodservice businesses, the dry storage area makes up a large portion of their overall inventory. Proper dry food storage is not just about keeping ingredients on the shelves; it’s about keeping them safe and maintaining a proper quality, so we don’t have waste. Here are some tips to help protect those dry goods in your inventory:
…safeguarding dry-stored items may not be as vital as our perishable items in the overall scheme of your food safety plan. But it is still important to a strong and active food safety (and food quality) program.
Keep it Dry
The first, and likely most important, rule of the dry storage area is to keep it dry. Moisture is the nemesis of many dry goods, causing clumping, mold growth, and an overall deterioration in quality. To combat this, having a climate-controlled storage area with proper ventilation is paramount.
Keep out Pests
How many remember the 6” rule? It is the one portion of protecting dry goods that is included in the food code. Pests are unwelcome guests in any kitchen and pose a significant threat to the integrity of dry goods. Being proactive with your pest prevention plan is crucial. Make sure your staff seal all dry goods to create a barrier against insects and rodents. Inspect storage areas regularly and be sure the area is being thoroughly cleaned by your staff. At our business, we ran into issues with no one wanting to “claim” the dry storage area, so we assigned it to our dish room staff. Be sure to inspect it regularly to make sure cleaning is taking place as expected.
Maintain Temperature Consistency
While dry goods are not as temperature sensitive as other raw ingredients we might deal with on a daily basis, maintaining a consistent temperature of the dry storage area will help to preserve the quality. While there is no official temperature, most will indicate that a good goal is to keep your dry storage area between 50ºF and 70ºF.
As always, be sure to label any open food. And never, never, never store chemicals in the same area as your food supplies. Several years ago, before there were any regulations that prohibited this practice, there was an incident at a mental hospital in Oregon where a patient who was helping in the kitchen mistakenly brought back roach poison, instead of the powdered milk he was asked to retrieve. This poison was then accidentally mixed into the scrambled eggs. Within minutes of consuming the tainted eggs, patients started to die. In the end, 47 patients died. While this is an extreme example andm any operators will say this would not happen in their business, we often find chemicals (even single bottles) mistakenly left in or around food supplies.
In the end, safeguarding your dry-stored items may not be as vital as our perishable items in the overall scheme of your food safety plan. But it is still important to a strong and active food safety (and food quality) program.
Don’t forget to check out our most recent SafeBites Webinar, “Cold and Flu: Prepare for the Season…it’s Coming!” If you have any topics you’d like us to address in 2024, please reach out and let me know. In the meantime, all of us here at FoodHandler wish you the very merriest of holiday seasons. Risk Nothing.
Exclusion and Restrictions: Understanding Employee Health and the Food Code
I received a call earlier in the month from a foodservice operator who suspected that one of their employees may have fallen ill and wondered if they had to send the employee home for the day. Once I started to ask a few more questions, it became obvious that the operator wasn’t really in-tune with the food code requirements on restrictions or exclusions for employees who may not be feeling well. Given that most operations are dealing with staff shortages currently and the fact that we are about to head into the fall and winter – when we tend to see an increase in upper respiratory and other illnesses, such as the flu - it seemed like a very timely and important topic for the blog this month.
Cross Contamination and the Surfaces that go Unnoticed
In October, I ran across a new research study published in the Journal of Food Protection in early-September. The article explored cross contamination in consumer kitchens during meal preparation. One of the authors was a previous SafeBites presenter, Dr. Ellen Shumaker, at North Carolina State University. Although the setting was consumer kitchens and not the commercial kitchen many of you deal with daily, the findings were very applicable to what we often see in the foodservice setting.
Emergency Preparedness: The Not-so Calm After the Storm
If you and your foodservice operation have been hit by an emergency or other disaster, what comes next and how do you move forward? Much of the answer to this is predicated on the actual disaster that you are dealing with – a flood is certainly a much different than a fire, but some of the food safety considerations remain the same if your business has been left intact and has not been damaged by the disaster.
Emergency Preparedness and Responding to a Disaster with Food Safety in Mind
As I write the first blog this month, the realities of the devastation in Florida are coming to light as we also deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, which impacted Puerto Rico late in September. Recent news has been focused on the recovery efforts for all who have been impacted. Thus, I thought it would be fitting this month to discuss emergency disaster planning resources in our first blog and delve into recovering from a disaster in our second blog later this month.
