 If your state is among the many that have experienced major heatwaves so far this year, take note of a new rule in California that may gain traction in other states. The state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board recently approved a standard on heat exposure that impacts indoor workplaces. As Restaurant Dive explains, employers who are covered by the new rule must provide their workers with access to clean drinking water and cool-down areas that are located away from radiant heat sources, where workers can sit without touching each other, and where the air temperature is below 82 degrees, unless employers can demonstrate this isn’t workable. It’s worth noting that workplace demonstrations protesting high kitchen temperatures have occurred in a number of states around the country. Free access to water, adequate air conditioning, and protective equipment that keeps workers cooler can all help improve conditions for workers – both in protecting your restaurant’s business culture as well as its food safety.
 Your kitchen and discarded waste can be magnets for flies and other pests in the summer. While pesticides can get rid of pests in your business, they’re really just a temporary solution – particularly if you don’t eliminate the reason they are attracted to your facility and their ability to enter it. Your food safety culture plays an important role here. The investments you make in this area can help you avoid having to spend continuously on a pest management program. Putting in the time and effort to protect your sanitation day to day is critical. That includes ensuring your team isn’t giving pests easy points of entry into your facility and that they’re cleaning surfaces and equipment deeply enough, even when it seems there isn’t enough time to do it. Food Safety Magazine advises businesses to define responsibilities around integrated pest management in their facility and develop SMART goals for staff to uphold them. Discuss pest management in meetings and review and recommendations from your pest control company with them. Train them to identify ways to make ongoing improvements and empower them to respond, so a minor slip-up doesn’t have a chance to balloon into an infestation.
 Food allergies affect nearly 11 percent of adults and 8 percent of children, sending 200,000 people to the hospital in the U.S. each year. As a result, chances are good that every day, you’re having to respond to guest questions and concerns about allergens in your menu items. Being able to do this during busy shifts, smoothly and without creating bottlenecks, requires tools that allow your staff to have access to allergen information at their fingertips so they can steer guests toward foods that are safer for them. As a recent report from Modern Restaurant Management explains, restaurants can accomplish this with an up-to-date POS that is connected with their kitchen and can show real-time information about food allergens based on the menu items being offered in that moment. Combine this with payment technologies that allow the guest to input information about their allergies up front, thereby immediately omitting any menu items that could be problematic for them, and restaurants can significantly reduce their potential “points of failure” around food allergies. Doing so isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s also good for business, considering that food allergy sufferers are a loyal group. When you can provide a meal that is safe and enjoyable for a guest, they are apt to favor your restaurant in the future and recommend it to others who struggle with allergies as well.
 That may not necessarily be the case. Food safety regulators often have stories about finding health and safety hazards in restaurants known for having strong safety cultures. Food safety consultant Francine Shaw experienced one recently while visiting a restaurant brand known for its food safety: She used the restroom and found that the sink wasn’t working, then reported it to an employee who shrugged in response. Unfortunately, all it takes is one understaffed store, or one employee who doesn’t take their responsibility to protecting safety seriously, to threaten the safety record of a business. So what can operators do? Developing and maintaining a culture committed to safety is a process that starts at the top of the business, trickles down to all employees and needs ongoing reinforcement. It helps to develop and benchmark training programs that can keep track of training progress and areas for improvement. Understand what tools and people the team needs to protect safety. (Technology can be a useful aid here but it shouldn’t be a crutch or a replacement for knowing how to protect the safety of the business.) Adopt the mindset of a regulator when assessing your food safety standards. Where might there be pitfalls that could threaten your safety record?
|
subscribe to our newsletter
Archives
May 2026
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed