Emergencies – whether they be power failures, severe weather, supply chain disruptions, public health concerns or some other event that interrupts business – can hit any foodservice operation.
Regardless of whether you’re operating a restaurant or a dining room in an adult-care facility, crisis-readiness hinges on a few essentials: training your team, maintaining emergency food and water reserves, and ensuring safe food handling, hygiene, and service standards.
As we approach the time of year when severe weather is more likely to pose business risks, here are a few areas to assess in case of emergency:
1. Staff training – This includes every team member, not just kitchen staff. Everyone should know how to unlock facilities, follow emergency menus, and perform unfamiliar roles with help from clear, posted instructions. Have regular drills and practice sessions so your team understands how to perform their emergency duties before a crisis happens.
2. Emergency reserves – After severe Midwest floods disrupted deliveries to foodservice operators in 2023, some operators avoided closures by tapping into their reserves and using pre-approved “low-labor” emergency menus. If you’re providing foodservice in a healthcare facility, federal guidelines may call for a three-day or even a seven-day supply of water and emergency food including shelf-stable and ready-to-bake items when staffing and equipment are limited. Establish clear plans to use in a range of scenarios.
3. Review of safety standards – Amid chaos, it’s especially important to maintain hygiene, correct temperatures, and proper service protocols to safeguard health and comply with regulations. Now is a good time to work with your kitchen team on a plan to maintain standards in a range of emergency scenarios.
4. Communication – Know how to contact the people you need to reach in an emergency and who is responsible for making decisions about key aspects of your operation. Assemble the names, numbers and email addresses of employees and disaster-support organizations. Have a business continuity plan that helps you proceed with food service when your utilities and staff are limited. If you’re working in senior living or adult care, maintain a current list of residents’ names, room numbers and nutritional needs

As extreme weather becomes more common, more parts of the country that haven’t historically seen many hurricanes, floods or other extreme conditions must plan for the worst. Having an updated emergency plan can help you to keep your employees informed and safe, as well as protect the food you have in your inventory. Ensure you have an accurate list of emergency contacts including the Red Cross and other public health authorities, utility companies, your plumber, rental equipment firms, and suppliers of water and dry ice, for example, and ensure that your employees have access to it. The same goes for your emergency supplies. Have flashlights, batteries, tarps, first aid supplies and other emergency supplies on hand for during and after extreme weather events. If your facility has lost power but it’s otherwise safe to remain there, you’ll want to protect your inventory from spoilage. Know which items should take priority for placement in an ice bath, for example, and what might be safe left alone in the freezer for 24 hours. If your staff has been relying on digital tools to track and log the temperatures of foods and appliances, ensure they know how to manage these processes manually so you’re able to save as much of your inventory as possible.

​Review your disaster response plan
A pandemic, record-setting inflation, supply-chain struggles, weather emergencies. As punishing as these times continue to be for the foodservice industry, they may also be affirming times for those who have managed to keep operations going. The businesses that are in the best position to survive in this dynamic environment tend to be those that have planned for emergencies. For better or worse, foodservice businesses are among the last businesses to close before a disaster and among the first expected to reopen after one, which makes emergency planning critical to keeping your staff and guests safe, protecting your operation’s sensitive information, and getting back on track quickly after a crisis.

​Your disaster response plan is one piece of this effort. Your plan should establish a team with designated roles to help you manage in a crisis and include up-to-date information on emergency contacts, insurance coverages (limits may have changed in the current market), communication protocols and other information you need to manage the resources your business needs to resume operations after an interruption. If you need help, or simply a review of what’s important to have on hand, the National Restaurant Association recently released a guide entitled Always Ready: Natural Disasters to help restaurants prepare. It brings together best practices from human resources and risk managers from independent and national restaurant brands to recommend actions for operators to take before, during and after a natural disaster. You can find the guide at www.restaurant.org.

Extreme weather is becoming a way of life – and if you operate in a region that gets cold in the winter months, there is increased risk of challenges including power outages that can lead to food spoilage, supply delays, and damage to facilities. Ensure you have a supply of winter weather safety tools ready in case of a storm: Shovels, batteries, flashlights, ice melt, and non-perishable food items, for starters. Have your HVAC system inspected to avoid surprise problems during the winter. Insulate any exposed pipes in your building – particularly now that outdoor spaces have become year-round extensions of the dining room. If a sudden power outage occurs, ensure you have a back-up plan to save the food items you’re refrigerating. Now is also a good time to review your emergency plan to make sure contact numbers for staff, suppliers and servicepeople are up to date and kept not only in the facility but in locations that can be accessed if you can’t reach the restaurant in inclement weather.

Don’t let hurricane season or other severe weather events compromise food safety at your restaurant. If possible, take steps now to safeguard your facility against weather threats. The USDA advises designating space well off the floor to store non-perishable items that would otherwise be contaminated in the event of a flood. Have appliance thermometers in your refrigerator and freezer to monitor temperatures during power outages. You can also better preserve foods by freezing items in your refrigerator that you won’t need right away, grouping frozen items together to keep them cold longer, and using gel packs, frozen containers of water and dry ice to maintain cold temperatures in your freezer if your power is out for an extended period.

While at the time of this writing fewer than 20 cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed in the U.S., the illness had still created a ripple effect: Across the country, many Chinese restaurants have taken a hit due to the panic associated with the illness. Even if you don’t operate a Chinese restaurant, you can likely appreciate the challenge of trying to manage a sudden health crisis that threatens your brand – or even your entire restaurant category. The widespread nature of supply chains, along with the increased risk of viruses and weather-related crop damage, mean your restaurant could face a brand crisis at any time. It’s critical to have a contingency plan for responding to such events so you don’t have to create a plan mid-crisis. In a report from the Vending Times, Steritech’s Paula Herald suggests brands should take such steps as securing food supplies and distribution agreements, developing a food security plan to protect their operation from theft in the case of shortages, reviewing and refining their sick-leave policies, developing a plan to manage widespread absenteeism including limits on public transport, cross-training staff so workers can easily step in for others who are out, and keeping (and discussing with employees) up-to-date-communication plans and staff contact lists so they’re not struggling to get in touch with their team during a health crisis. Are you confident in your current crisis response plan – and in your team’s ability to carry it out?