 The rise of automation in restaurants has promised benefits including greater efficiency, consistency and revenue. (For example, a recent report about Sweetgreen’s first robotic Infinite Kitchen say the location has delivered restaurant-level margins of 31 percent, a 45 percent reduction in employee turnover, and a ten percent increase in check sizes.) As the minimum wage increases and restaurants continue to face other pressures, the drive for automation will only continue. But is food safety keeping up? Food safety expert Francine Shaw expressed some doubts in a recent podcast. She relayed how she had been asked to review the policies and procedures of a restaurant that was already operating automated restaurants in a number of states. But they lacked a HACCP plan and had no food safety management or personal hygiene plan of any kind. She made recommendations to this business but they decided not to follow them because of the expense. Such examples raise concerns: When the machines supporting a foodservice operation need to be broken down and cleaned every few hours, will the staff be trained and available to do that? Will the business be able to demonstrate to their insurer that automation is resulting in stronger food safety results? Food safety won’t be an automatic result of automation — it will require a plan that keeps pace with the advancement in other parts of a business.
 Protect the safety of prepared foods
Ready-to-eat convenience foods represent a growing portion of sales for restaurant brands across categories. Research from Innova Market Research found that three in five consumers are using convenience foods at least once per week, while one in five are using them more than once per day. As restaurants look to meet this rising demand, however, they also face new potential risks with regard to food safety (not to mention food waste). If you’re offering more convenience foods nowadays, is there room for you to manage these risks more effectively using staff training, improving hygiene practices or refining the organization of your prepared foods case? For example, if you have an excess amount of a protein near the end of its shelf life and incorporate it into a soup or sandwich for your prepared foods case, how are you ensuring that it is served for the right amount of time before being removed? If you discount these foods in order to clear them, how can you preserve guest trust in your food safety? How can you push the envelope with ingredient innovation with these foods and ensure your food safety practices keep pace with those changes as needed? A recent report from Food Safety Magazine outlines some of the risks that these foods can pose — and the questions operators can ask themselves to make sure they are making the most of the opportunity to capture guest interest in fresh-prepared foods while minimizing their risks.  September is National Food Safety Education Month, so it’s a natural time to weave some employee training, games, competitions, rewards and other team engagement activities into your routine. Consider your operation’s bottlenecks, weak points, or other areas that can suffer when you’re short- staffed. Where could your team’s knowledge be improved incrementally this month so you’re in a stronger position to approach the challenges of flu season and the holidays? If you’re looking for some guidance or prepackaged training materials, the FDA and National Restaurant Association offer a range of free resources to share with staff that you might also use as the basis of contests. If you’re proud of your food safety record to date, National Food Safety Education Month is also an opportunity to share your wins with guests — or simply your commitment to keeping them safe. Even a few years post-pandemic, consumers continue to perceive safety as a key pillar of your hospitality.
 A food safety culture tends to generate the best engagement when business leaders are committed to it and weave it into their everyday actions and conversations. But what if your business is in the position of having to persuade senior management of the importance of investing more in its food safety culture? It takes some managing up. But if you approach leaders strategically, you can demonstrate how it’s in their best interest to support and promote food safety as a business value instead of simply a requirement. In a recent podcast for Food Safety Magazine, Nuno Soares, food safety consultant, trainer and author of the new book How to Sell Food Safety: 3-1/2 Steps to Increase Your Chances of Being Heard, spoke about how he advises food safety workers to approach business leaders. Approach it with an understanding of what motivates the leader. Will they do anything to avoid a financial loss? Are they more motivated by the promise of a better future and are willing to take risks along the way to get it? Provide some data to reinforce the potential direct and indirect consequences of doing nothing. What is the potential impact on sales, costs, penalties, employee morale and talent retention? Soares recommends starting the meeting by stating the problem you’re facing, then explaining the stakes. Follow that with a broad plan you’d like to use to generate the positive outcomes you have in mind (and how you can minimize the potential negative ones). Finally, make sure there is a clear call to action at the end – like an agreement, a next meeting on the calendar, or information about the target budget – anything to overcome the likelihood of a delay in proceeding.
 Only 49 percent of companies have a formal food safety culture plan, according to a recent survey from Quality Assurance Magazine. Is yours among them? And even if it is, does your plan lay the right groundwork for a strong food safety culture throughout your organization? In the hectic day-to-day management of a restaurant, it can be difficult to take a step back from tactical safety procedures and consider your approach to food safety from a broader, more strategic perspective. But doing so can help you ensure you’re not just ticking items off a checklist, but that you’re protecting the reputation and longevity of your business. In a recent report in Modern Restaurant Management, food safety expert Francine Shaw mentions the key ingredients that make for a robust plan. The plan should go beyond policies and tap into a key goal that can be baked into employees’ attitudes, behaviors and overall values. To accomplish this, employees have to understand the “why” behind the plan. For example, what can go wrong for a guest or the business when food safety isn’t prioritized? Who are the human faces behind foodborne illness? Reinforce these messages in ongoing training that holds people accountable, empowers them to take action and speak up when they have concerns, and rewards them for upholding your standards. Use technology to take what you already do well and elevate it – with real-time safety prompts, transparency, and additional data that informs you of areas that need attention. All of these messages will have greater power when your restaurant’s leaders demonstrate their commitment to them and set an example for the rest of the business.
 Making tasks around your business easier, faster and simpler carries a lot of weight when it comes to retaining staff and ensuring your training procedures stick with them. It can also reduce your food safety risk – no technology required. For example, the conventional rag-and-bucket approach to cleaning and sanitizing is prone to human error and cross-contamination because of the complex and time-consuming steps involved in preparing the solution, as a recent report from QSR Web explains. If you have workers who speak English as a second language or are just joining your team, it’s that much easier for mistakes to happen. If this is a bottleneck for you, could single-use sanitizing wipes help relieve pressure during especially busy periods – or on days when your staff is stretched thin? Where could the introduction of new tools or procedures save your staff time or make cleaning tasks easier? Monitor where your staff has to spend time – and what jobs consume the most of it. Using dispensers that minimize waste, posting checklists of necessary tasks in handy locations, and making it possible for staff to reach cleaning wipes or other supplies with one hand may sound like tiny changes, but they might help you make incremental improvements to your restaurant’s overall hygiene.
 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
September 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed