Running a restaurant business is everything but simple and easy. It does not include just actions such as choosing the most appropriate and trendy location, decorating the space and trying to find the most attractive furniture.
No! There are other numerous things to think about.
Less fun but more important activities include those related to choosing the best staff for your restaurant, providing best quality uniforms for them, taking care of the hygiene level of all the restaurant areas, including washrooms, etc.
You may wonder why those latter mentioned activities are more important than others. Well simply because those activities directly affect possible food contamination.
So, basically, if you serve at least one, the smallest piece of food affected by food contamination, there are legal consequences!
Therefore, in order not to have those types of problems in your restaurant business life, follow these three simple steps!
1. Avoid Food Contamination
The storage system has to protect food from contamination. All the food which is used in the kitchen must be properly stored at the proper temperature and in an appropriate place. This step is highly important!
When you store food and groceries at the necessary temperature level you are eliminating biological hazards, such as parasitic and bacterial microorganisms.
In order to make sure the kitchen staff never forgets to check the temperature, you can make some posters and use them as a reminder.
When it comes to the best possible space for storing the food and groceries, firstly have in mind that you should always store the food at the least six inches off the ground.
So, there are no potato bags on the floor! Next step to do is to separate all the varieties of food and groceries into containers which suit them. You will definitely not keep meat and other raw materials on the kitchen counter but in the fridge, right?
With the above actions, you completed the # step in keeping your restaurant safe for your customers!
2. Think About Hygiene, Always!
In this case, you are not in charge just for the clean, sanitised and perfectly tidy restaurant space, but also for the hygiene level of your staff.
There is really a big reason for being extremely cautious when it comes to keeping your restaurant sanitised and spotless – the law! Yes, the law!
All existing regulations regardless cleanliness of the kitchen and other areas of a restaurant, as well as the hygiene level of your employees, actually do exist because they are involved in the food preparation process. Therefore, those could be potential food contaminants if not done in an appropriate way.
So, make sure your staff always wear clean and tidy uniforms of the right size to prevent injuries and contamination. Next action is to sanitise all the areas on a regular basis, with proper products.
Also, you should really invest in good quality washroom pieces. Finally, a cleaning schedule would be a necessity. Write on board what cleaning actions have to be done on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
In this way you are doing two crucial things:
- Preventing any chance of food contamination regarding the hygiene level
- Being perfectly safe when the restaurant inspection comes unannounced
3. Educate Your Kitchen Staff
None of the above-mentioned actions would make sense if there are no people who can take them in a proper way. This is why you have to keep your kitchen staff well-informed and invest in their additional training and education if necessary!
Kitchen staff should be acting as one great team, working smoothly and efficiently. So, do everything in your power to update them with all the necessary info when it comes to food safety tips! They really must know everything about storing, processing and preparing each of the groceries in the appropriate way.
Furthermore, make sure they take care of their hygiene level. Hire a professional who will explain to them why it is so important to wash hands every time after using different types of food, for example. Put a lot of hygiene posters all around so that those serve as reminders for them. There are many possibilities, you just have to pick the one that is best for your needs.
Now, these are really simple steps to do, however, the restaurant business is very demanding. Sometimes restaurant owners do not have enough time or energy to deal with all the details, especially with those related to uniforms and regular cleaning.
Luckily, you do not have to worry! Alsco can solve all these problems easily! We do not offer just a wide range of products, but also managed rental service for uniforms and hassle-free hygiene service for your washrooms!
Call Alsco now and our friendly representatives will happily help you to find the best offer!
Photo: Freepik
