A Safe Place to Eat: Implementing Food Safety Standards For Restaurants

Importance of Health and Safety Within The Confines of Food Safety Standards

The importance of health and safety standards in restaurants is interconnected for various reasons.

Primarily these standards help prevent foodborne illnesses by ensuring that food is cooked and served properly. Following food safety standards extends beyond customer health, they also play an important role in gaining public trust. When people know a restaurant takes their health and safety seriously and follows all safety standards, they are more likely to become recurring customers. 

Compliance with these standards is often a legal requirement for restaurants. Food places that don’t follow health and safety regulations can face legal consequences including fines or even closure. 

Along with customer protection, health and safety standards are also important for the well-being of employees. A safe working environment reduces the risk of accidents and injuries, leading to an efficient and satisfied workforce. 

Food safety standards also have operational impacts such as reduced food waste in food handling processes, leading to cost savings. 

Common Health and Safety Hazards in Restaurants 

Restaurant owners and staff should be aware of potential dangers to ensure a safe environment. Following are some health and safety hazards that are commonly found in restaurants:

1. Cross-Contamination: Cross-contamination occurs when bacteria or other harmful microorganisms are transferred from one food to another. It’s especially risky in an environment where raw meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetables are being handled. 
2. Slip and Fall Accidents: There are higher chances of slip accidents in disorganized kitchens with wet floors, cluttered walkways, and uneven surfaces. 
3. Cuts from Sharp Objects: Kitchen tools such as knives, slicers, broken glass, and sharp edges can cause serious cuts and injuries. 
4. Chemical Hazards: Chemicals such as cleaning agents must be handled properly to prevent chemical burns and poisoning. 
5. Fire Hazards: High heat and flammable materials in a kitchen like cooking oils and grease are particularly prone to fires. 
6. Burns and Scalds: The kitchen has a high risk of burns and scalds from hot surfaces, boiling liquids, and steam. 

Food Safety Guidelines for Restaurants

Below are some food safety guidelines for a successful food safety program so you can prevent a foodborne illness outbreak and keep your customers and employees safe. 

1. Personal Hygiene

Poor hygiene is one of the most common causes of foodborne illness. It can be prevented by following standards and policies. There are certain factors that you should keep in mind while creating a hygiene program for your staff. 

Washing Hands

Handwashing takes less than a minute but it’s necessary to prevent the spreading of germs that cause foodborne illness.

A person who forgets handwashing could potentially contaminate food. To develop handwashing practices in your staff, it’s important to install handwashing sinks in proper locations. Also, train your staff on the correct way to wash their hands. 

Hygiene Practices

Lack of personal cleanliness such as soiled uniforms and aprons, uncovered hair, and unwashed hands can become a solid source of contamination and violation of food safety standards. 

There are some good hygiene practices that everyone should follow within restaurant premises. 

• Eating and Drinking:

Employees should never eat or drink near food or food prep areas. If they want some beverage, they should use cups with secure and closed lids with straws and keep them away from food, utensils, and equipment. 

• Jewelry 

Restaurant staff should remove all jewelry before preparing food as jewelry can have germs or accidentally fall into food. Wearing a plain wedding band is usually acceptable. 

• Clean Work Uniforms 

Regular laundry is a must for staff uniforms and aprons, and cleaning apparel should also stored away from food prep areas. 

• Hair Restraints 

Hair restraints and clean hats are a must thing in the kitchen. It also includes beard masks to prevent hair from contaminating food. 

Staff Illnesses

Addressing staff illnesses is important for maintaining food safety. Certain pathogens are notorious for causing food-borne illnesses in restaurants. Staff members must notify their manager in case of sickness caused by the following pathogens;

• Norovirus: Highly contagious and often spread through hand-to-food contact.
• Shigella spp: Commonly spread by unwashed hands or contaminated water.
• Nontyphoidal Salmonella: Frequently linked to poultry, eggs, meat, and dairy.
• E. coli: Commonly associated with undercooked ground beef.
• Hepatitis A: Handwashing is the best defense, as cooking does not destroy this pathogen.
• Salmonella Typhi: Often linked to ready-to-eat food.

Disposable Glove Use 

Disposable gloves are an effective precaution for preventing contamination, but there are some guidelines for wearing gloves:

• Handwashing: Hands must be washed before wearing gloves.
• Changing Gloves: Gloves should be changed at appropriate times, including: after handling raw meat, before touching ready-to-eat food, when they become dirty or torn, before starting a new task, and after four hours of continuous use.

2. Proper Food Handling

From receiving shipments to serving guests, proper food handling is important. It is essential to follow strict rules and continuous monitoring throughout the process.

Some foods require special handling called TCS foods (time-temperature control for safety), they should be kept at a proper temperature and completely out of the dangerous temperature zone (41 to 135 degrees Fahrenheit).

Below are some important factors to consider while handling food. 

Receiving, Handling & Storage 

• Inspect Shipments: Carefully inspect all food shipments and check their temperature. Reject all items that don’t meet the criteria.
• Germs: Keep raw foods separate from ready-to-eat food to prevent cross-contamination. Clean and sanitize every piece of equipment after use.        
• Cooking Food Correctly: Cooking food to the correct internal temperatures is necessary to destroy pathogens. Ensure food is cooked to a safe minimum temperature and verify with a reliable thermometer.
• Proper Cooling: Correctly cooling foods is crucial to prevent them from entering the danger zone. Food must be cooled from 135°F to 70°F within 2 hours, and then from 70°F to 41°F within 4 hours.
• Food Storage: Adopt the "first in, first out" (FIFO) method for food storage. Store TCS foods in a specific order, such as ready-to-eat foods, seafood, whole cuts of beef and pork, ground meat and fish, and whole or ground poultry.

3. Cleaning and Sanitizing

Maintaining a food-safe kitchen is incomplete without proper cleaning and sanitization. There is a clear difference between cleaning (removing dirt and debris) and sanitizing (reducing pathogens on surfaces). 

Simple process to clean and sanitize food contact surfaces:

• Wipe Surface: Remove crumbs or food particles from the surface.
• Wash: Use an approved food-safe cleaning solution to clean the surface.
• Rinse: Rinse the surface with clean water.
• Sanitize: Apply an approved sanitizing solution at the correct concentration to the surface.
• Air Dry: Allow the surface to air dry.

4. Pest Control 

Pest control is crucial to stop unwanted irritants from infecting your place and spreading infections and foodborne illness. Below are some key components of a good pest control plan:

Control Access

To start off, inspect food shipments and check if there is any sign of pests and reject items that show compromise in quality. 

Seal cracks, install door sweeps, and use screened windows and ducts to stop pests from entering.

Control Growth 

Make it your routine to daily remove garbage, and clean trash containers and dumpsters.

Clean up spills, crumbs, and food waste. Don’t leave any food out overnight and make sure that all undersides of your equipment are cleaned too. If pests are caught, search for professional assistance near you and contact them immediately. 

5. Purchase from Approved Suppliers 

Sourcing food from reputable suppliers is critical for food safety. You need to make sure that all food suppliers meet local, state, and federal requirements. Also, perform a thorough inspection of each shipment and verify with the quality assurance team whether it is safe to consume or not. 

6. SOPs, Training, and Monitoring 

In order to ensure overall food safety, you need to provide continuous training and SOPs and monitor your staff.

Standard Operating Procedures SOPs is a formal document that outlines rules and regulations related to food safety plans. It indicates who, what, where, when, and how the task should be performed. These written procedures help in maintaining consistency, accountability, and efficiency in your kitchen. 

Training is another essential aspect of your food safety plan that makes sure that all staff members are following established SOPs.

You can effectively implement training by providing continuous education without making it a one-time event upon hiring. With the help of visual aids like posters throughout your kitchen, you can remind your team to keep food safety guidelines top of mind.

7. Food Safety Inspections

Food Safety Inspections are important to maintain the highest level of hygiene and compliance with food safety standards.

Only trained and specialized professionals can conduct these inspections who thoroughly assess various aspects of food handling, preparation, and storage.

The reason for these inspections is to protect public health and identify any potential hazard that could lead to foodborne illness. 

Xenia - The Ultimate Food Safety Inspections Software

From comprehensive assessment to record keeping, Xenia stands out as the best restaurant inspection software that caters to teams of all sizes. It has a user-friendly application that is accessible to both desktop, and mobile devices, and tablets. 

This software offers real-time procedural implementation and task streaming that benefits both single and multiple-location businesses. Xenia is an all-in-one solution for the food industry as it enables the effective planning and execution of restaurant inspection processes with excellence.

Our platform covers restaurant tasks such as SOPs, checklists, HACCP audits, and temperature monitoring, which is essential for every restaurant's operations. It also integrates wireless sensors to collect data temperature from various equipment. 

In addition to aforementioned highlights, the program also offers pre-built solutions for various processes, from food safety checklists to AI-powered SOP creation.

The platform's flexibility allows you to access a repository of online resources or create custom SOPs tailored to your specific business needs.

Key Features 

• Restaurant Inspection Checklists: Fully Customizable checklists for inspection audits and operational tasks. 
• AI-Powered SOPs: Create SOPs with AI tool and reduce time spent on manual SOP creation.
• Work Orders: Create, assign, manage, and track work orders across multiple teams, all from a single dashboard.
• Real-Time Updates and Collaboration: Real-time communication and collaboration through an in-built chat feature for individual communication with assignees for tasks.
• Preventive Maintenance: Schedule, assign, and manage comprehensive maintenance schedules across your entire organization. 
• Corrective Actions: Enhance the effectiveness of inspections and audits by swiftly generating tasks from failed steps.
• Asset Management: Xenia allows comprehensive record-keeping of assets and sub-assets, including serial numbers, purchase dates, and manuals.

Pricing 

• Free Forever: Free for up to 5 users with access to task & work orders, parent assets, internal chats, template builder, etc.
• Starter: $99 / month for 15 users and comes with work calendar view, work and template reports, sub-assets, and sub-locations.
• Premium: $199 / month for 15 users and offers unbound access to all the core features.
• Custom: Need something tailored to your organization?

Book a Demo Today.