How safe is your food safety strategy?

When is the last time you assessed how you measure your overall food safety performance? Even if you’re currently ticking all of the boxes when it comes to your food safety protocol, your strategy may not be evolving in step with your equipment, products, technology, ingredients or other aspects of your business. To determine what a restaurant’s key performance indicators should be, Modern Restaurant Management suggests a restaurant’s leaders assess whether or not their health scores and audit scores are improving, what their highest-risk issues are and if they are increasing or decreasing, what problems are happening repeatedly, if the number of locations experiencing repeat fails is decreasing, and if corrective actions are being logged and monitored. Once you have established a set of performance indicators, socialize them throughout your organization so people understand and support them, then document them for reference, reinforce them regularly in training and meetings and report back on progress. Be sure to celebrate your wins – a positive review from a guest with severe food allergies can go far in reinforcing your team’s commitment to food safety.