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Food Safety & Sanitation Certification for staff.
This is a subject everyone should be involved in here. Sanitation is a major key in a successful service. Yes, service, why you ask? because as any professional knows in order to maintain a consistant, quality product you need every staff member contributing to proper sanitation from the receiver to the server.
So as we all know, if you keep a clean environment for your food storage, preperation and production areas any restaurant will continue to serve a quality product. This is not to say that you can be clean yet sell a poorly served product and be successful.
There is the Safe Serve certification but it is not in my opinion always properly administered during new hire training. There is also the issue of language barriers when issuing this training in-house. If Safe Serve is to be the standard in sanitation/food handling then it should be more of a national standardization and training administered accordingly.
Now there is the Food Managers certification out there which is required especially for management. But my thoughts are, what if it is required for all food handlers in a restaurant? Would this drastically improve the overall food safety and sanitation nationally? Is this economically feasible for most businesses?
And to close this out, can anyone say HACCP? I hope to have stirred some good conversation here!!!
So as we all know, if you keep a clean environment for your food storage, preperation and production areas any restaurant will continue to serve a quality product. This is not to say that you can be clean yet sell a poorly served product and be successful.
There is the Safe Serve certification but it is not in my opinion always properly administered during new hire training. There is also the issue of language barriers when issuing this training in-house. If Safe Serve is to be the standard in sanitation/food handling then it should be more of a national standardization and training administered accordingly.
Now there is the Food Managers certification out there which is required especially for management. But my thoughts are, what if it is required for all food handlers in a restaurant? Would this drastically improve the overall food safety and sanitation nationally? Is this economically feasible for most businesses?
And to close this out, can anyone say HACCP? I hope to have stirred some good conversation here!!!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Matt Urdan on -
Hey Robert, great topic.
Yeah, I can say HACCP. I can even give you what the acronym stands for. But I feel that the Food Managers certification wouldn't really result in much difference in overall food safety or sanitation, so I don't believe it would justify an additional cost.
I believe that you can never have high enough food safety and sanitation standards. But that being said, the reality of the rush, at least in fast casual chain restaurants that I've seen first hand, is that food safety often takes a back seat to getting the food out during high volume peak periods.
That being said, I want to point out that if we were so fragile as a species to succumb when food safety standards were not being followed, we would be in pretty bad shape. And while food poisoning is often passed off as the stomach flu and not recognized for what it is, and while it is a most serious issue; most of us are not going to get sick if we don't change out that sanitation bucket as often as we know we should.
I think there are some non-negotiable food safety and sanitation standards and that there are others that are definitely the right thing to do and what every manager should ensure that his staff does do, even great managers miss something almost every day in the course of running the restaurant. But those things don't concern me. As long as temperatures of storage units are correct and the storage units are maintained; as long proper storage and heating and cooling procedures are followed, as long as there is a dilligent handwashing program in place, and items are prepped one at a time and all food surfaces are properly sanitized and thermometers are used on the line and the managers make sure that team members are not sick or contagious when coming to work, I feel really good about the safety of food that will be put out in a restaurant.
The issues that really concern me, however, that I had little control over when I was a restaurant manager, was the transportation and delivery of produce and truck deliveries. Were the trucks refrigerated or frozen. Were my items I ordered handled correctly. If I was the first stop on the truck delivery or the last stop, was my food ever thawed or refrozen, and if I wasn't receiving the truck, did my manager or chef or other employee make sure he or she refused product that had signs of time and temp abuse or damage in any way?
Those are the issues that I was always most concerned about. Even if a restaurant does everything right, if food was abused during shimpment, and it wasn't caught, that's when trouble could really happen. And in cases like that, no matter how well your staff was certified and trained, in the foh, boh, on the line or the management or prep team--if a critical inspection of items received in the restaurant did not take place, something could have slipped through the cracks and that's when things get dangerous and unforseen no matter how much training has taken place and how well certified the staff is.
Cheers!
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Permalink Reply by Robert Lile on -
Great response! This is what I wanted to start and to remind others of such an important issue. Anyone reading this please keep it going.
Thanks,
Robert
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Permalink Reply by Matt Urdan on
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Thanks!
Oh, and one more thing: no matter what food safety practices are in place and no matter how well trained your staff are, if there's something like a gross contamination of a product, such as Green Onions or Spinach from a trusted source, I don't think any training in the world could prevent a tragedy from ocurring. Even if you wash every item in your restaurant, there's always a risk that something will slip though from a seriously contaminated product.
Cheers!
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Permalink Reply by Carl Muth on -
I have a lot of links and information on my Health and Safety page, if any one is looking for a resource on Food Safety.
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Permalink Reply by Robert Lile on
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Thanks Carl, I will also check it out.
Robert
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Permalink Reply by Jon Frank on -
This could be something here. I mean with the internet, certifications can be done on your own time, at your own place, at your own pace....I found this website that has training just like that...
www.daymarksafety.com They call it certified Safer
they have a blog to for questions...http://daymarksafety.blogspot.com
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Permalink Reply by Robert Lile on
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Cool!
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Permalink Reply by Amanda Vroom on -
HACCP...I have totally heard that word in my daily life at work!
Funny how food safety continues to evolve and our guidelines, restrictions, and behaviors are constantly being challenged and tweaked to ensure that we are serving guest friendly food all the time.
In our company we always are thankful that (knock on wood) we have never had a catastrophic food illness or outbreak. We coach our Managers all the time on their ability to uphold the highest standards to protect our Guest, company, and brand. This constant focus on the highest standards has impacted our ServSafe scores as well our health inspections.
Food safety isn't optional..it's mandatory!
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Permalink Reply by Robert Lile on
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Exactly!
You see at my home location we are located on Walt Disney World property where we are subject to not less than 3 different inspectors. We get the all important state inspector, Disney has a complete team that checks every location monthly and we contract a third party company just to keep it all inline.
Disney also does Food Manager Certification, being on property just makes for convenience!
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Permalink Reply by Amanda Vroom on
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You just can't be too careful when it comes to food and the public.
Think back...how many food borne outbreaks do you recall???
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Permalink Reply by Jon Frank on
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Outbreaks can be a huge issue. What types of items/plans do you guys all have? What specific items do you use to help with prevention? Always looking for new stuff you know!
Rob- you mentioned that Disney has a team of people? What type of criteria do they grade you one, that seems really interesting?
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Permalink Reply by Robert Lile on
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They uphold the same state standards, by law they have too. They are there as a supporting role and preventive measure before the state has any issues. They insure we are properly handling all food products from receiving through to final sale. We HAVE to adhere to the HACCP system which must be checked 3 times daily. If you don;t use HACCP you are opening yourself up to a potential disaster.
The nice thing is there not really there to just inspect and walk away they are in a way like a partner. If we ask for help or we find issues they will do what ever to help us get it resolved. You would think having so many inspections would be a hassle but it does make sure we are following all safe food practices.
As well if there are any "cleanliness" issues/pest they would point that out too. Fortunately our company holds this standard pretty high. Besides our own "in house" cleaning schedule we have a third party cleaning service. If you just take ten minutes a day to clean something "DEEPLY" as we call it, you will not have to worry about having a "cleaning issue".
We also have franchise partners all over the US. We have a team that inspects each location no less than 4 times a year, including ours. I'm not talking about flying in and out the same day walk through, our people go for 3 days. This partner QA goes to the point of all FOH/BOH processes. They review everything from customer service, service times and everything from receiving to final product standards.
All this may sound extreme but what is extreme compared to a sudden food borne illness breakout. In fact we just pulled all tomatoes if we don't know the origin. There is a warning out for tomatoes grown in Mexico, if you have not heard, I would look into it. Fortunately most of our tomato product comes from right here in Florida.
Robert
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