In an effort to recruit and retain staff in a tough labor market, restaurant operators are making changes to their benefits packages to demonstrate the safety and flexibility of their working environments. But these offerings don’t need to be hidden behind the scenes. Some brands are taking these changes as an opportunity to present the brand in a positive light with guests – and even offer them some perks in the process. Take Noodles & Company, which has made a commitment to supporting employees’ mental health through benefits including free counselling and mental wellness support through the HR platform LifeWorks. In January, Noodles & Company translated this into a guest-facing offer: They partnered with the online therapy company BetterHelp to offer a month of free therapy to up to 4,000 guests who purchased from the restaurant during the month. We have all been on the receiving end of a person who overcommunicates – too many instructions and too many details can make a person tune out the extra information. But in the context of communicating with staff, tuning out key information can generate harmful risks. Are there any key messages that tend to get lost in a sea of instructions? Lean on your best frontline staff to boil down the most important information you need to communicate for a given task and account for employees’ need to absorb it in different formats. Some information is best learned when a person has to do a related task or teach it to others, while other procedures can be presented in quiz form for a team contest. It also helps to take the temperature of your team on a regular basis: Does everyone have a nonpunitive means of asking questions and accessing information when they need it? The past few years have been an odd period for buffets. As they have begun creeping back in various forms, now may be a good time to ensure your facility and staff are up to speed on the safety protocols that can manage the food safety risks buffets can pose. Make sure your staff have easy access to handwashing sinks throughout their shift. Ensure tongs and other utensils are changed often and washed thoroughly to prevent cross-contamination. Clean and sanitize food serving surfaces regularly. Finally, make certain you have a reliable (preferably digital) system for checking and recording the temperatures of the hot and cold foods you’re serving, as well as for replacing them promptly. Spring is in sight – and as the weather warms, gathering outside to sample food becomes even more appealing. If you operate a food truck or otherwise serve your food offsite, it can be even more challenging to adhere to the standards you follow to keep your guests safe from foodborne illness. As you prepare for warm-weather offsite events, ensure that the facilities you’re using (or the adaptations you’re planning) allow for proper cleaning and sanitation, hand hygiene, plumbing, refrigeration to safe temperatures, pest control and waste management. Cold winter nights are just right for restaurant delivery. How confident are you in the food safety commitment of those bringing food to your guests? Whether they are third-party vendors or your own staff, their approach to transporting food can impact everything from the temperature at which an order is received, to whether the food of an allergic guest is safely kept separate from other items. Any new packaging you have introduced in recent months can call for additional adjustments in how orders are handled. What mechanisms do you have in place to assess your delivery safety risks so you can make adjustments as needed? Frontline workers embody your restaurant’s food safety culture – but what they represent to the public isn’t always understood at the top of the business. A recent webinar from Food Safety Magazine indicated that senior leaders in an organization tend to rate their culture as 68 percent more mature than their frontline colleagues do. That’s even though frontline managers make up 60 percent of the workforce and manage 80 percent of it. To bridge the disconnect, experts on the webinar advised gentle nudges to steer frontline food safety in the right direction. These nudges could include physical markings on floors and walls, group handwashing stations that make activities like handwashing more social, daily routines in which staff must answer a food safety question or provide input and the supervisor responds with positive feedback or an action item they are taking as a result, social normative messages that provide feedback about the team’s overall knowledge about a particular area of food safety, or social recognition – like a time-off savings account that can be tapped by a team that wins a contest around food safety. In 2023, the FDA began recognizing sesame as an official allergen, triggering a response in some restaurants that has surprised some consumers. As a recent report from Fast Company indicates, sesame seeds are so prone to cross-contamination due to their small size that it’s challenging for restaurants and food producers alike to guarantee their absence from foods. So instead, sesame is being added to recipes where, in many cases, it wasn’t present before, in order to provide greater clarity to consumers about the presence of the allergen. This leaves allergic guests – who can be especially loyal to restaurants that support them – with fewer options and at potentially greater risk for consuming a cross-contaminated food. If you’re looking for ways to abide by the new rules while offering options to allergic guests, the group Food Allergy Research & Education may be of help. Amid the focus on keeping and serving food at the right temperature, it can be easy to overlook contamination risks in the beverages you serve. Ice machines can be havens for mold and other contaminants if they are not cleaned, sanitized and handled properly – so much so that you can find TikTok videos of HVAC service people discovering a range of unappetizing health risks lurking in ice machines. Beyond regular cleaning and preventive maintenance of the machine by a professional vendor, make sure your staff know how to scoop ice safely and are trained to take notice of insect activity, improper drainage, dust accumulation and other potential hazards in and around the machine. In the past few years, food safety has taken on elevated importance in restaurant kitchens. But efforts to comply with new regulations and guest expectations may make it easier to overlook other kitchen hazards that can have a significant impact on the health of a business. Specifically, some of the top risks to restaurant staff are slips, trips and falls due to slippery walking surfaces or obstructions, or cuts and burns from kitchen equipment. At a time when restaurant labor is precious and no operator can afford to lose a good employee to injury, make sure your staff receives the training and ongoing reminders they need to minimize these risks. |
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April 2024
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