From our e-mail bag:
“I’m struggling with getting my kitchen staff to understand and practice hand washing. The last three times the Health Department came, I was cited for a critical violation, and now I must ensure that everyone understand hand washing before I am inspected next time. Do you have any suggestions?” - Larry, restaurant owner, New York
Larry, you are dealing with a common issue that many people in the restaurant industry don’t realize is very important.
First, let’s go through a couple of basics.
1. Here’s how to wash your hands: Start with hot water (generally we say, “As hot as you can stand,” but temp-wise, it should be around 110˚ F/38 ˚ C). Place your hands into the water stream. Wet your fingers, hands, and wrists (exposed part of the arms). Lather with a lotion or foam soap, and scrub (including between the fingers) for 15 to 20 seconds. How long is 20 seconds? Try singing “Happy Birthday to You” or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” TWICE. Counting “One Mississippi, two Mississippi” also works. If you are allowed to use a fingernail brush (follow your health department’s regulation), use it as needed. Rinse hands under running water. Dry your hands with a paper towel - not your hat, apron, uniform, pants, or anything else!
2. When should you wash your hands? “Food handlers should wash their hands whenever they contaminate their hands.” But what does that mean? It depends on your operation, but here are some basics. Wash your hands:
-When you first come to work
-After you use cleaning chemicals or have handled trash
-Whenever you change your gloves
-When you return from eating, drinking, or using the bathroom
-When you change your task, i.e., moving from one raw product to another (beef to chicken), moving from doing dishes to cooking on the line, etc.
-After handling raw Potentially Hazardous Foods (PHFs) and before handling anything ready to eat (RTE)
-After touching your face, hair, eyes, or mouth
-After coughing or sneezing into your hands
While this list is not complete, it’s a start. Feel free to add to it as you need to!
Now to the root of your question: How do you get your employees to wash their hands?
1. Set the expectations. For all new employees, on the first day of orientation, review the steps for hand washing and emphasize when and how they should wash their hands. Do the same thing at a meeting for the existing staff. It wouldn’t hurt to push this a little more with existing staff, since it has been a problem. Be sure everyone who works for you and with you knows that hand washing is NOT optional!
2. Coach daily. Depending on your management style, it is usually very effective to observe a behavior and coach immediately. If a prep cook takes the trash out and comes back to the prep area without washing, point it out and ask the cook to wash his/her hands. Correct it as soon as you see it happen. Waiting until the shift or the day is over will not help the cook realize the mistake – and it certainly won’t help the food prepared on that shift, either.
3. Use signs and posters. All hand sinks should have posted signs to let people know what the sink is for. However, additional posters and signs can help. You can make your own, or use products available from different sites. We’ll link to a few at the end of this blog entry.
4. Show your staff why hand washing is so important! A product called Glo Germ can actually show the effectiveness of proper hand washing. The food handlers put a special lotion on their hands; the manager shines a black light on their hands, and the “germs” light up. The food handlers then go to the hand sinks and wash their hands properly. The manager shines the black light again, and – presto! The “germs” are reduced – or gone! Many educators and health department officials use this to teach effective hand-washing skills. The Glo Germ website is: http://www.glogerm.com.
5. Set the example. “Do as I say, not as I do” never holds weight when it comes to getting employees to buy into good practices. But you know that. So make sure you are washing your hands whenever appropriate! Nothing is more embarrassing (or hurts your credibility as a manager more) than having an employee say, “Well, you didn’t!”
If you make hand washing (or anything related to food safety) a bigger “piece of the pie” in your daily routine right now, eventually it will become a smaller focus as your food handlers begin to demonstrate good habits regularly.
The best advice I have for you, Larry, is to make sure you spend time each day talking about hand washing – and do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because the health department said so!
Have a question or topic you’d like us to cover? Shoot it to us at info@C4FL.com. Wash your hands first, please. (Ha Ha)
Here’s a link to a hand washing sign: Click Here to go to E-Tundra.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Cost of a Food Borne Illness to a Restaurant
When a food service operation - whether a restaurant, a hotel, or the hot dog stand on the corner - makes customers sick, the effect compounds on the operation itself.
When customers fall ill because of something they ate, they have a Food Borne Illness (often abbreviated FBI). A location faulted with making customers sick deals with medical bills, the PR nightmare, and even more.
Financial Costs: That the sick customer will take his or her business elsewhere is easy to understand. But a sick (or upset) customer is likely to tell others about the experience, substantiated or not. Count on losing more business than just one person’s or family’s. In addition, your insurance goes up, training or retraining costs strain your budget, and the medical bills for those who are ill can go on and on. The overall financial burden can be staggering - to the point of breaking the average operation.
Emotional Costs: Although not always easily apparent, expect emotional costs when a customer becomes ill. A food borne illness can devastate the business owner or manager as well as the patron and family. Your customers trust you, and you care about your business. Your staff, too, pays an emotional price; it can be hard to come to work when you know your workplace has made customers sick.
PR Costs: The very word outbreak can kill a business’s reputation. It is applied when a number of people eat the same food, and two or more of them become ill with similar symptoms. The term can be very misleading to the general public (think of the movie Outbreak, in which thousands of people died). A newspaper headline reading, “Local Restaurant Cause of Outbreak,” can create a tailspin of damage that erases the business of even the largest restaurant or hotel chain.
To minimize the chance of an FBI outbreak, we recommend the following:
1. Take temperature logs of all coolers regularly.
2. Make sure any employee who is sick is not working with food (no exceptions).
3. Make sure all managers, chefs, and key managers understand - and are involved with - proper food safety procedures daily.
When customers fall ill because of something they ate, they have a Food Borne Illness (often abbreviated FBI). A location faulted with making customers sick deals with medical bills, the PR nightmare, and even more.
Financial Costs: That the sick customer will take his or her business elsewhere is easy to understand. But a sick (or upset) customer is likely to tell others about the experience, substantiated or not. Count on losing more business than just one person’s or family’s. In addition, your insurance goes up, training or retraining costs strain your budget, and the medical bills for those who are ill can go on and on. The overall financial burden can be staggering - to the point of breaking the average operation.
Emotional Costs: Although not always easily apparent, expect emotional costs when a customer becomes ill. A food borne illness can devastate the business owner or manager as well as the patron and family. Your customers trust you, and you care about your business. Your staff, too, pays an emotional price; it can be hard to come to work when you know your workplace has made customers sick.
PR Costs: The very word outbreak can kill a business’s reputation. It is applied when a number of people eat the same food, and two or more of them become ill with similar symptoms. The term can be very misleading to the general public (think of the movie Outbreak, in which thousands of people died). A newspaper headline reading, “Local Restaurant Cause of Outbreak,” can create a tailspin of damage that erases the business of even the largest restaurant or hotel chain.
To minimize the chance of an FBI outbreak, we recommend the following:
1. Take temperature logs of all coolers regularly.
2. Make sure any employee who is sick is not working with food (no exceptions).
3. Make sure all managers, chefs, and key managers understand - and are involved with - proper food safety procedures daily.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
NEW RULES FOR FOOD SAFETY (FDA CHANGES 2009)
The latest version of the FDA Food Model Code has been released. So, of course, there are some updates that every restaurant manager, chef or operator must know.
Depending on your local health department or jurisdiction, these rules either are in force already or will be phased in at a later date. However, it’s a good idea to start training and enforcing NOW.
#1: Tomatoes: Raw, cut tomatoes have been officially added to the Potentially Hazardous Foods (PHF/TCS) list. The number of serious outbreaks over the past few years has caused the FDA and the CDC to look more closely at processed or cut tomatoes. Treat them now as you would cooked chicken, cooked beef, or other PHFs - including temperature control, date marking, and rechilling after prepping.
#2: Handsinks: In the past, some jurisdictions had a "grey area" regarding some items that might block a sink, including wheeled mop buckets, wheeled carts, and smaller trash cans. There is no grey area any longer. Make sure all handsinks are free and clear at all times! Here’s a suggestion: create a three-foot "bubble" around the front of every handsink. Never allow anything within that bubble - except a body using that sink.
#3: Ah-choo: Food handlers get sick just like everyone else. Not all of them can (or choose to) go to a doctor. In the new version of the food code, employees who exhibit high-risk symptoms (vomiting, diarrhea, fever, fever with sore throat, or other illness) who chose NOT to see a doctor must be symptom-free for at least 24 hours before returning to work. This means that a manager whose employee calls in sick for a day or two may need to give a third day off in order to accommodate this regulation.
#4: PIC: The code still requires a "Person in Charge" who is responsible for food safety. However, under the new regulations, the PIC need not be present when there is no production or service of food.
#5: Vending: The code mandates important new rules for vending machine operations. Many of us don’t need to deal with this; however, if you have vending machines, email us at info@c4fl.com and we’ll be happy to provide you the details.
#6: Tags: Under the old code, shellfish tags must be kept with the shellfish. The new code reiterates this point, and adds that the 90-day period for keeping the tags begins on the date you either use the product or discard it.
#7: Temperatures: Under the older code, restaurants with older equipment came under a “grandfather clause” exempting them from keeping their units at 41 degrees F or below. That exemption has been eliminated. Everyone must now abide by the current temperature regulations.
This C4FL update is to help you stay ahead of the game in food safety. Some health department jurisdictions are good about letting food service operations know the latest rules and changes, while others just expect you to know them.
Over the next few days, we'll show you how to implement some of these changes and we’ll give you some practical pointers.
Sign up to be notified by email when we post new topics... and share your ideas in our response section!
Depending on your local health department or jurisdiction, these rules either are in force already or will be phased in at a later date. However, it’s a good idea to start training and enforcing NOW.
#1: Tomatoes: Raw, cut tomatoes have been officially added to the Potentially Hazardous Foods (PHF/TCS) list. The number of serious outbreaks over the past few years has caused the FDA and the CDC to look more closely at processed or cut tomatoes. Treat them now as you would cooked chicken, cooked beef, or other PHFs - including temperature control, date marking, and rechilling after prepping.
#2: Handsinks: In the past, some jurisdictions had a "grey area" regarding some items that might block a sink, including wheeled mop buckets, wheeled carts, and smaller trash cans. There is no grey area any longer. Make sure all handsinks are free and clear at all times! Here’s a suggestion: create a three-foot "bubble" around the front of every handsink. Never allow anything within that bubble - except a body using that sink.
#3: Ah-choo: Food handlers get sick just like everyone else. Not all of them can (or choose to) go to a doctor. In the new version of the food code, employees who exhibit high-risk symptoms (vomiting, diarrhea, fever, fever with sore throat, or other illness) who chose NOT to see a doctor must be symptom-free for at least 24 hours before returning to work. This means that a manager whose employee calls in sick for a day or two may need to give a third day off in order to accommodate this regulation.
#4: PIC: The code still requires a "Person in Charge" who is responsible for food safety. However, under the new regulations, the PIC need not be present when there is no production or service of food.
#5: Vending: The code mandates important new rules for vending machine operations. Many of us don’t need to deal with this; however, if you have vending machines, email us at info@c4fl.com and we’ll be happy to provide you the details.
#6: Tags: Under the old code, shellfish tags must be kept with the shellfish. The new code reiterates this point, and adds that the 90-day period for keeping the tags begins on the date you either use the product or discard it.
#7: Temperatures: Under the older code, restaurants with older equipment came under a “grandfather clause” exempting them from keeping their units at 41 degrees F or below. That exemption has been eliminated. Everyone must now abide by the current temperature regulations.
This C4FL update is to help you stay ahead of the game in food safety. Some health department jurisdictions are good about letting food service operations know the latest rules and changes, while others just expect you to know them.
Over the next few days, we'll show you how to implement some of these changes and we’ll give you some practical pointers.
Sign up to be notified by email when we post new topics... and share your ideas in our response section!
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