ACF Chef Shawn Kohlhaas is the principal partner with Culinary Cultivations, a food safety consulting firm in Grand Rapids, Mich. Here are 4 quick tips for showcasing your safety and sanitation efforts, just in time for Food Safety Month in September.
1. Do what you say. Nothing says you’re providing a safe environment and safe food by making it very clear in your and your team’s actions that you’re taking precautions seriously and consistently. Use signs outside your building about your safety measures and the requirements you have for your operation to keep everyone safe. Having a person who greets your customers as they enter helps not only showcases your safety standards but also helps manage them and make sure they’re being adhered to.
2. Always follow your normal safety training protocols. Everything we do on a daily basis, that we’ve learned and practiced before all this happened, is what we need to continue to do. That includes washing your hands properly, limiting your contact with hands to your face, restricting barehand contact with ready-to-eat food and sanitizing frequent touch points such as door handles, chairs, tables and menus.
3. Have shift meetings every day, at every shift, with all personnel, to review your current food safety protocols. Update and remind staff of any current Covid-19 protocols you have in place, and continue in-service trainings for food safety using written tools. That’s how we can continue to ensure our staff have the knowledge to keep us all safe.
4. It’s a good idea, once you’ve trained your staff, to provide them with written documents on safety so they can refer to them. Providing them digitally and printed is a good idea; the more communication you can give them, and the more repetition there is, the better. Also have the safety policies easily reviewed in your restaurant — on a wall or in an accessible location such as an employee notification station.
