Halfway Gone, A Mid-Year Food Safety Check-up for your Foodservice Business
July is often a time when a portion of us in the foodservice business are at our prime. In many areas of the country, we are in the midst of our busiest season of the year. Yet, for those in other foodservice operations it is a slower time of year, where we can spend time refocusing on the busy season ahead. Whatever the case for you, as we cross over the halfway point of 2024, it is an ideal time to conduct a thorough food safety check-up.
As we all know, ensuring food safety isn’t just about meeting regulatory standards, it’s about safeguarding your customers’ health, protecting your reputation, and maintaining operational excellence. So, this is a great time of year to take a step back and conduct a comprehensive inspection and walk through of your entire operation from receiving to service and evaluate areas of concern. While not a comprehensive list, here are some things to pay particular attention to.
- Storage and Stock Rotation:
- Check coolers and freezers to ensure they maintain the correct temperatures for storing perishable items. If you haven’t developed temperature logs to track this daily, now is the time to start doing this – at FoodHandler, we’ve even created a log especially for this and it is available for free on our FoodHandler website. It could help prevent the loss of inventory in the future – and potentially save you lots of money should a cooler or freezer go down this summer.
- Ensure your dry storage room meets your cleanliness standards and is free of evidence of rodents and/or pests.
- Check to ensure your stock rotation practices are being followed by employees to prevent expired or spoiled goods from being used.
- Kitchen Cleaning and Sanitation:
- Assess the cleanliness of the kitchen as a whole. Most foodservice operations do a fairly good job at keeping the daily food preparation areas cleaned, but what about areas we don’t get too every day? The floor areas under standing equipment, the outside of ovens, the exhaust system in the kitchen? Have these been kept up to your standards?
- Schedule a professional pest control inspection to prevent infestations that could compromise food safety.
- While all personal hygiene standards are important, perhaps none more so than handwashing. Reinforce proper handwashing practices among staff and be sure to follow up on this every day.
- Staff Training:
- Verify that all staff members have received adequate training in food handling, hygiene, and safety protocols. If they have not, start planning a training session now, don’t wait.
- Ensure certifications for food safety are up to date for all relevant personnel.
- Supplier Relationships:
- Review the quality assurance measures in place with your suppliers to ensure they meet your food safety standards. Be sure to discuss this with the individual who receives your food and checks in the orders – they may not be telling you of recent issues they may have noticed.
… this is a great time of the year to take a step back and conduct a comprehensive inspection and walk through your entire operation from receiving to service and evaluate areas of concern.
After you’ve done your inspection, make sure you document what actions you took as a result. While I hope you never have to defend yourself in a food safety lawsuit, the fact is that documenting things now not only helps you keep up with your overall food safety program, but it also could help provide documentation for an affirmative defense in a lawsuit.
As a result of the inspection, you may notice that the policies and procedures you had implemented may not be performing as well as you had hoped. Update these now while the issues are fresh in your mind. Be sure to also note a day to do a follow-up inspection. Depending on what you discovered during this inspection, that may be a week from now, two weeks from now, or two months from now – whenever it is, schedule it in now and stay on top of your food safety program. Remember, consistent monitoring helps maintain high standards and promptly address any emerging issues.
A mid-year food safety check-up can be a solid proactive measure to protect your customers and your business. By investing time and resources into thorough inspections, staff training, and updating policies and procedures, you ensure that your foodservice establishment continues to operate at the highest standards of food safety. Risk Nothing.
Handling Leafy Green Salad
We have had several produce outbreaks of foodborne disease from our lettuce, spinach, and other greens in the last several years that have been devastating to the produce growers and distributors, retail grocery stores, restaurants, and consumers.
Food Packaging Safety in a Vacuum
Extending the shelf life of fresh foods has come a long way in the food industry since curing meats with salt and sugar or canning vegetables with heat processing. The food service and consumer markets needed some better visual packages to draw the eye to the freshness factor and the technology of food packaging has filled our dinner plate. Vacuum packaging and modified atmosphere packaging, shortened to “MAP”, are the terms used for the method of food packaging used every time we choose convenience over more complex scratch meal preparation. According to industry statistics, billions of packages of vacuum and MAP-packaged foods flood the marketplace today. In both modified-atmosphere and vacuum packaging, food is packaged in a pouch made of barrier film.
The Eleven Commandments of Food Safety at Your Restaurant
Lists help us remember all kinds of information. Given the list of recent national foodborne outbreaks in the news, keep repeating this list to your food service team. They are kind of like “commandments”. As a professional in a food service facility we should think of the very basic food safety concepts that every crew member should aspire to learn, even though this list may have different priorities based on your menu. The first 3 apply to anyone who serves food, from a bag of popcorn to a full course meal. As chefs or managers, if we can “set the example” by repeating good food safety practices visibly to the crew, it will help them understand how important it is to the success of your facility. Thou shalt:
The Worst Customer Complaint: Foodborne Illness
Food service managers and crew try to follow the rules of food protection. Yet, occasionally a complaint may arise and these calls take priority over all other daily crises. If you have been in the food service industry long enough, you may have gotten one of these. A customer may claim, "I think your food made me ill." These words inflict instant anxiety. If it happens, here are some next steps to think about in advance of such a claim:
