How to Promote Food Safety at Your Restaurant

For a small restaurant during the pandemic, it’s such an important thing to have your business be viewed as the best possible choice when it comes to food safety. It’s especially critical to be perceived as safe and healthy for patrons to enjoy. You want customers to feel not only happy after their meals, but absolutely to return again and again.

Having a high restaurant food safety rating as well as a perception of safety is critical. How can you promote food safety with your team to make sure your business is responsible?

Here are some recommendations to promote food safety at your restaurant:

1. Clean Regularly

For the sake of food safety and that of morale, you will be in big trouble if you are not cleaning regularly and maintaining a clean kitchen. Anything that comes into contact with food needs to be both cleaned and sanitized.

Cleaning is about appearance. This means everything looks fresh, wiped down, and put away. However, just because a tool appears clean does not mean it does not have dangerous bacteria on it. Sanitizing, whether with chemicals like bleach or with extremely hot water, is for killing those bacteria.

2. Store Food Properly

Every restaurant owner needs to understand the risks that come with improperly storing food. The owner must impress this upon his team, and enforce this behavior. There are multiple rules, but in general, all things must be temperature controlled, with safe practices in both handling and replacing food into storage. One case of salmonella can break a business. Do not risk improper storage, ever.

3. Clean Hands, Clean Heart

Employees don’t need to just have clean workspaces. Whether they are seen by visitors to your establishment or not, your employees must also have good hygiene habits. This always includes washing hands well, with soap and water, especially after using the restroom and handling food. Now, especially, you want your employees to be perceived as being extra careful with all things.

You cannot be too careful right now, whether with food safety or with your public image. You want to be seen as having an overabundance of care, to protect both your team members and your customers. This abundance of care, both in making your establishment appear clean and orderly and also with carefully sanitizing and protecting food safety, will show your customers they are both respected and protected in your establishment. This will make them loyal customers, both now and in years to come.