Getting Your Playbook for Food Safety Organized
As anyone who has ever worked in a foodservice operation knows, from the time food is received in your establishment to the time it is served to your customers, following proper food safety practices is crucial. What many don’t often think about is this time really should extend from the time the manager places their orders with their suppliers (including which purveyors you utilize), through the time the food is consumed – even if that consumption occurs off your premises and days after the original order was picked up by the guest. This is something that has certainly been highlighted by the pandemic as customers across the nation are utilizing take-out, curbside to go, and third-party delivery options more so now than ever before.
Last month, we discussed the importance of a basic written infrastructure related to food safety, including standard operating procedures, written communication, and logs. While other priorities may have taken precedent over the last 11 months, as the new year gets into full-swing, have you ever stepped back to look at your entire food safety program and all it encompasses? Is your food safety playbook updated and in order?
While we could debate the legal liability and responsibility for food consumed off-site should a foodborne illness occur, if news of any illness resulting from food served in your establishment reaches the media, the negative consequences are unmistakable.
Over the course of the last year, your food safety system has changed. Maybe you did not write down what those changes were, but what you do to ensure food safety has certainly changed to accommodate the new systems that you established to operate your businesses during the pandemic and the increased demand for food to-go. Whether you took the time to develop new standard operating procedures, reevaluated hazards, established new preventative controls, or updated how you monitored and developed corrective actions, changes were sure to have happened.
If you haven’t explored what safety measures you need to include in your standard operating procedures for food that is taken for consumption off-site, visit with your team about your system and develop these protocols now. Be sure to develop information that can be given to your guests on proper holding and storage of food and how to reheat the food properly. While we could debate the legal liability and responsibility for food consumed off-site should a foodborne illness occur, if news of any illness resulting from food served in your establishment reaches the media, the negative consequences are unmistakable.
Take the time now to pull all this information together. Having one repository of all information – printed or digital – helps access the information you need, when you need it. Moreover, as we emerge from the pandemic and the recovery begins to our economy and our industry, you have the formal, written systems in place to help bring on and train new staff.
If it seems too dauting and cumbersome to pull all of this together, bring in your supervisors and staff to assist – remember, food safety is a team sport. As we discussed in our January webinar, Decision Making in Uncertain Times: Considering the ROI on Food Safety, a small investment now can pay off greatly in the end. After all, the teams that will be playing in the Super Bowl next weekend, didn’t show up without a game plan. They made it to the big game by being focused, well-organized, with each player being mindful of how their performance impacted the overall team. Risk Nothing!
Sanitation, Sanitation, Where Art Thou?
Continuing the theme I picked up on a few months ago, discussing common causes of foodborne illness, I’d like to focus this blog on cross contamination, more precisely sanitation. Sanitation is another issue that employees don’t often do at home, so they discount the importance of it in the food production environment. That is to say that they have never made someone sick at home because they only clean their countertops and they have likely never sanitized their kitchen, so why is it so important in a foodservice facility?
Handwashing: The Habit that Isn’t as Common as We May Think
Earlier this year, I started to focus our FoodHandler Food Safety blogs on common food safety issues faced in each foodservice operation across the world. We’ve covered some of the most common issues, but perhaps none is more common than improper hand hygiene.
Is Implementing a Color-Coded Food Safety Plan Right for your Operation?
Foodborne pathogens are by far the most prevalent cause of foodborne illness in the United States and across the world. There are 31 known agents that cause foodborne illnesses, and more that are unspecified or yet undiscovered – remember, E. Coli 0157:H7 wasn’t identified until the early-1980s. It is estimated each year, 48 million illnesses occur because of these known and unknown pathogens, resulting in over 3,000 deaths.
Maintaining your Equipment: Is it the Missing Ingredient in your Recipe for Food Safety?
Although I am no longer in day-to-day operations, between our students and foodservice lab at the university and my volunteer activities in my local church, I keep a close hand in food production. This past week, I had the opportunity to lead a group of men at our church in preparation of a luncheon for 100 women who were attending a spirituality retreat. Over the course of the morning, I realized our main cooler in the kitchen was not functioning properly and was about 10˚F above the required temperature. While we do have a commercial kitchen, we do not routinely log temperatures, so when the unit started to malfunction is questionable. Even more concerning was not the lunch we were preparing for, but the dinner that was served the night before for 300+ families in the parish.
