Is Your Restaurant Considered Clean?

We have all heard the phrase, “cleanliness is next to godliness.” And for the foodservice industry, it could easily be, “cleanliness is next to success,” The cleanliness of you restaurant has a huge impact not only on your restaurant’s bottom line, but your guests’ overall experience as well.
So how can you ensure your restaurant’s cleanliness is meeting and possibly exceeding your guests’ expectations? There are specific signs of a clean restaurant. Does your restaurant exhibit all nine?

View the infographic, "9 Top Signs of a Clean Restaurant" to find out >

Lessons Learned: Using Television Cooking Shows to Teach about Food Safety

Turn on your television at any time during the day, and you are bound to find a cooking show on one of the channels. Whether it's a show dedicated to offering up helpful hints and recipes or a cooking competition, it is clear the concept of food is something that draws viewers in.

Yet, in between all the slicing and dicing and sautéing, are the chefs and professionals on your favorite shows following the best food safety practices?

A recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found that many of these programs miss the opportunity to model proper safety measures. Yes, this can be seen as a challenge to many, but researchers also took their learnings as an opportunity to identify steps toward improvements these shows should take. These included: food safety training, safe food handling practices and using food safety as a judging criteria. 

While this study may pertain to the home cook, there are some valuable takeaways that you can apply to your restaurant. These include:

1. Ensure a food safety training course is in place. Also, offer follow-up training to answer any questions and to make sure that food safety best practices are being followed.
2. Demonstrate and educate on safe food handling practices. This includes following proper cooking instructions and implementing processes to avoid cross contamination.
3. Follow up with employees and make sure they are following proper hand hygiene practices and washing hands at key moments.

Food safety is critical to the success of your restaurant. Use these tips to enhance your food safety program so your restaurant can set the standard for food safety.

Selecting the Right Surface Sanitizer for Your Restaurant

In 2012, Technomic asked 38,000 quick serve restaurant customers what were the most important factors they consider when visiting a restaurant. While food ranked at the top of the list, 88 percent of those surveyed said cleanliness was most important to them.

We know that many factors go into ensuring your restaurant is clean. However, did you know that using the right surface sanitizing products play an important role in not only the cleanliness of your restaurant, but the health of your employees and guests as well?

Selecting the Right Products
With so many surface sanitizing options out there, how do you select the right one for your restaurant? The following are key questions to ask when determining what product is right for your employees and guests.

Efficacy

• Does it kill pathogens prevalent in foodborne illness outbreaks, such as Norovirus, Salmonella and E.coli?
• How quickly does this product kill these pathogens (e.g. 30 seconds vs. 5 minutes)?
• Will the surface remain wet long enough to meet the required kill times (e.g. 30 seconds)? Or, will you need to re-wet the surface in order to achieve the required kill times (e.g. 5 to 10 minutes)?
• Is the product also an effective surface cleaner?
• Is the product effective on both hard and soft surfaces?

Safety

• Are there any precautionary statements on the product label – like must wash hands after use or hazard to humans and domestic animals?
• Is the product approved for use on food-contact surfaces? Or, are you required to rinse food-contact surfaces with potable water after using the product?
• Does the product contain harsh fumes that might irritate employees and guests?
• Is the product compatible with the surfaces and equipment you plan to use it on?
• Is it easy to use?

Sustainability

• Is the product certified by a third party, such as EPA Design for the Environment (DfE)?

 
While these may seem like many questions to consider, key thought leaders in sanitization encourage you to walk through all of them to make sure you are selecting the ideal surface sanitizer for your needs. In the end, you want to make sure your products have a strong combination of efficacy, safety and sustainability.   

What Foodservice Workers Need to Know About the FDA Final Rule on Consumer Antibacterial Soaps

Earlier this month, the FDA issued its Final Rule on antibacterial soap products marketed to consumers or made available for use in public settings. This ruling excludes antibacterial soaps used in foodservice settings, as well as hand sanitizers. In addition, while this rule only applies to a subset of active ingredients and products used outside of healthcare and food handling industries, there might be some confusion as to the regulation’s impact on the foodservice industry. 

The Important Role of Hand Hygiene Plays in Foodservice
Handwashing with soap and water is the first and most important step any restaurant worker can take to ensure the safety of food and reduce the risk of getting sick or making others sick. 

Whether it takes place on the farm where the food is being grown, or in the kitchen (at home or in a restaurant), hand hygiene is vital to preventing our food from becoming contaminated. Also, when people think about hand hygiene in the foodservice industry, they typically think about handwashing with soap and water. 

Antibacterial Soaps and the Foodservice Industry
While the FDA does not specify what type of soap – bland or antibacterial – for foodservice industry workers to use, antibacterial soaps are common.  

Antibacterial soaps are often used because they contain ingredients designed to kill germs on the skin, adding an extra level of protection from microbial contamination. In fact, a 2011 study, published in the Journal of Food Protection, compared bland and antibacterial soaps and found that antibacterial soaps did provide a statistically significant greater reduction in bacteria.

In addition, handwashing technique plays a critical role in reducing the transient, or illness-causing germs, on hands. Yet, oftentimes, handwashing technique is incorrect, and using an antibacterial soap helps kill germs missed by an ineffective washer. 

Download "Food Safety Hand Hygiene Regimen" Poster >

All in all, hand hygiene and using the right hand hygiene products play a critical role in food safety.

Risk-Based Handwashing

Changing behaviors within your current culture

The challenge of handwashing in foodservice is rooted in basic human behavior. If the would-be washer can see no reward, he or she becomes a non-washer; this is even true for managers. Handwashing simply becomes a matter of custom, comfort or convenience with no connection to the actual risk. The complexity of a sustainable solution results in operators attacking one barrier at a time, but a holistic approach has a much better chance of success.

Real issues abound. Barriers of language, culture, turnover, absenteeism, productivity, hand sink location, empty dispensers, skin irritation and training time frequently come up as challenges to handwashing at key moments. However, the reality is there is no measurement for a clean hand, no standards for frequency and seldom are employees disciplined for not washing their hands. These barriers actually protect the status quo and endanger the life of the customer, staff and the very business itself.

Handwashing competes with the highly valued indicators of productivity on which managers and staff are measured and rewarded. The risk of a foodborne outbreak is already high but getting much higher by virtue of the current trends in rising punitive damages and threatened executive jail time. Advancements in science like Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) have equipped the CDC Pulse-Net labs with the capability to identify outbreaks previously missed by first-generation systems. 

Measuring Handwashing
Risk management must play a larger role in fixing the time-hardened handwash behaviors. The answer is in process control for which numbers are needed -numbers to reach and sustain goals via the built-in employee Performance Review structure. The steps for a sustainable solution are to first assess the risk, set standards, set the conditions for success, train and finally monitor to motivate the needed behavior change.

The Handwashing For Life Institute has developed tools to help change handwashing behavior. All of these lead to measurement as a way to motivate and sustain hand cleanliness levels and the behaviors required. 

High-touch surfaces frequently harbor pathogens. High levels of pathogens remain invisible but are more likely to cross-contaminate than those surfaces frequently cleaned and measured with either ATP or UV tracing systems. The measurement increases the cleaning frequency.

Handwashing effectiveness can be given a number by using invisible tracing lotion and scanning with a UV light to illuminate areas missed. This training method adds visual impact that helps a workforce better understand the need for a thorough wash. 

A safe-level frequency of washing hands is an important standard to engage the staff in setting. The number is always imprecise, but it is reached through collaboration with peers and their managers. The most dramatic improvement in handwash frequency occurs with the addition of electronic logging of actual washes and comparing them to the employee-agreed safe level standard. In addition, some firms have developed electronic monitoring solutions to help measure and ensure compliance.

Data converts randomness to a process and drives a sustainable handwashing solution. Handwashing becomes clearly understood as a critical risk-based behavior. Now success can be calibrated, celebrated and perpetuated.

What is Hepatitis A?

News of an apparent Hepatitis A outbreak has been making headlines this week. But, what is Hepatitis A? How can it be prevented, and should your restaurant be concerned?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hepatitis A is a highly contagious liver infection that is usually transmitted either through person-to-person contact or through consumption of contaminated food or water.[1]  Typically, uncooked Hepatitis A-contaminated foods are the source of an outbreak; for example, frozen strawberries are the source for this most recent outbreak.[1]  Yet, according to the CDC, cooked foods can also be a source of infection if the temperature during food preparation is inadequate and does not kill the virus, or if food is contaminated after cooking, as is the case with outbreaks associated with infected food handlers.

Hepatitis A is rare in the United States. In fact, according to the CDC, there were an estimated 2,500 acute Hepatitis A infections in the United States in 2014.[1] It is also one of the few foodborne illnesses that can be prevented by vaccination.[2] Yet, outbreaks can happen, and the good news is this foodborne illness is preventable, if certain measures are taken. These include:

• Washing hands with soap and water – food handlers must always wash their hands with soap and water after using the bathroom and before preparing food
• Wearing gloves – food handlers should always wear gloves when handling or preparing ready-to-eat foods
• Staying home when ill – restaurant workers should stay home from work if they are ill[3]

While Hepatitis A is rare and preventable, it is still important to learn the facts about this foodborne illness.

Additional information can be found on the following websites:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• FoodSafety.gov

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Viral Hepatitis – Hepatitis A Information. Retrieved September 19, 2016, from http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hav/
2. Foodsafety.gov. Hepatitis A. Retrieved September 19, 2016, from https://www.foodsafety.gov/poisoning/causes/bacteriaviruses/hepatitisa/
3. About Hepatitis. How to Prevent Hepatitis Infection. Retrieved September 19, 2016, from http://www.about-hepatitis.com/hepatitis_prevention#.V-AAHfkrJhE

Factory-sealed Dispensing Systems vs. Bulk Soap – What’s the Difference?

Having a good hand hygiene regimen – washing your hands with soap and water or using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol when soap and water are not available – is one of the most important measures we can all take to help reduce the spread of germs that may cause illness. This is why it is critical for us to ensure we are using the most effective hand hygiene products and dispensing systems.

Soap and hand sanitizer dispensers play a key role in reducing the spread of infection. For example, touch-free dispensers help to prevent the spread of germs and allow for easy access to hand hygiene products. 

Yet, there is one dispensing system to avoid - an open, refillable bulk soap dispenser. Open, refillable bulk soap dispensers are those that are refilled by pouring soap into an open, partially filled reservoir. Continuing to use these types of dispensers actually works against efforts to create a healthy environment. Contaminants can easily enter the dispenser when it is being refilled and through use. Also, the bulk soap container itself can get dirty, spill, or be punctured, depending on where it is stored. 

One way to overcome this challenge is to switch to factory-sealed soap systems, which provide the safe, smart and sustainable solution to reducing contamination risks. Refills sealed at the factory help eliminate the possibility of outside contamination, foreign object ingress and vandalism. These dispensers not only help to keep hands cleaner – they also reduce maintenance and help give your restaurant a cleaner, more professional look. 

Learn more

September is Food Safety Month - Get the Facts

Every year since 2009, the non-profit Partnership for Food Safety Education has addressed food safety myths that people commonly hold and share with others. Over time, more than two dozen myths have been debunked with the FACTS that consumers need to know to help reduce their risk of foodborne illness.

All foods -- regardless of the way they were produced -- need to be handled and stored properly to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria that can cause foodborne illness.

Home Food Safety Mythbusters challenges ideas consumers often have about types of food and preparing and handling food at home -- things like:

“A hamburger that is brown in the middle is safe to eat.”

“A vegetarian is not at risk for foodborne illness.”

“Microwaves kill foodborne pathogens.”

This September for National Food Safety Education Month, the Partnership is highlighting “Top Ten Home Food Safety Myths and Facts.” 

How many of these “Top 10” have you believed over the years? Do you rinse your chicken (not a safety step), but you don’t rinse your melon? The Partnership invites you to take a look at food handling habits, and see if there are any that could be improved. 

The consistent practice of four core home food safety steps -- Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill – including the practice of good hand hygiene before, during and after preparing your favorite meals, can reduce your risk of foodborne illness. And, importantly, it might help you set better and more consistent handling practices that reduce risk to other people in your household, like young children, an elderly relative or an immune-compromised family member. These people are at greater risk for getting sick – and for being hospitalized for a foodborne illness.
 
About Partnership for Food Safety Education:
The Partnership for Food Safety Education delivers trusted, science-based behavioral health messaging and a network of resources that support consumers and health educators. Get free consumer education downloads and register for events at www.fightbac.org.

Foodborne Illness Outbreaks in Restaurants – By the Numbers

We all know a foodborne illnesses outbreak poses a potential threat to your business. Yet, you might think your restaurant will never fall victim to one; really, what are the chances? Let’s take a closer look at the numbers associated with foodborne illness outbreaks to help put this into perspective.

• 60 – the percentage of foodborne illness outbreaks that happen in restaurants according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• 250+ - the different types of foodborne illnesses that exist
• 864 – the number of foodborne illness outbreaks reported in the United States in 2014 according to the CDC
• 3,000 – the number of people that die each year from a foodborne illness
• 128,000 – the number of people hospitalized annually because of a foodborne illness
• 48 million – the number of people that get sick from contaminated food each year in the United States
• Priceless – the impact a foodborne illness can have on your restaurant’s reputation

These numbers really speak for themselves. They demonstrate that not only is a foodborne illness outbreak more common than you may believe, but that an outbreak has a tremendous impact on your restaurant’s success. These numbers also serve as a reminder that it is imperative to implement a strong food safety program. 

Cleanliness is the Difference

As a restaurant owner and operator, you want your restaurant to stand out. Exceptional food and service help to create a great guest experience, but one component of the dining experience that also has an impact is cleanliness.

According to data from Technomics[1], a restaurant’s cleanliness is one of the top attributes your guests value and one that either keeps or deters them from dining with you again. Cleanliness is also a critical aspect of your restaurant’s food safety program. This means the overall cleanliness of your restaurant not only affects your bottom line, but your restaurant’s reputation as well.  

It is important for your guests to experience a clean and inviting environment the moment they step through your restaurant’s door. This means making sure the exterior of the building is neat and tidy. It also means your lobby and entryway is pristine. This includes clean windows and floors and a well-painted and well-maintained waiting area.

This experience then carries through to the dining area. First, be sure to have clean tables and floors. When cleaning the tables, use a surface cleaner and sanitizer designed specifically for the food service industry that quickly and effectively removes germs on surfaces. Also, be sure to clean menus and other objects that guests frequently touch. 

Then there are the restrooms. Make sure these are cleaned frequently and the soap and paper towel dispensers are full. Speaking of soap dispensers, they play a key role in reducing the spread of illness-causing germs. For example, touch-free dispensers allow for portion-controlled dispensing and easy access to hand hygiene products. Also, look for soaps that are factory sealed. These types of refills help lock out germs and help protect the health of washroom users. 

You want your guests to have the best experience possible while dining with you, and the cleanliness of your restaurant helps to create that experience, and could be one of the reasons they dine with you again.

[1] Consumer Brand Metrics, Technomics 2016