The restaurant and foodservice industry has had many challenges to overcome recently. New forms of business require adaptations also in the hygiene plans and communication about hygiene practises is more important than ever.
Cleanliness in professional kitchens is an essential part of food safety. Safety is based on systematic practices and good hand hygiene. Under normal conditions, kitchens have a limited but sufficiently comprehensive range of products available to carry out all cleaning work. In practice, a professional kitchen only needs 5-6 products to maintain the required level of cleanliness.
“The foodservice industry is international, so product information must be found in many languages. For safety’s sake it is important that the instructions for use and dosing are clear; pictograms and colour tags help to facilitate the correct use of the products,” says Janek Seitovaara, Solution Manager at Kiilto’s Foodservice business, and continues:
“It’s also becoming more and more common to rent workforce. Rented workforce is used for example to make up for sick leaves and other absence. Also visiting guest chefs are popular and a common sight in restaurants nowadays. It is important for us at Kiilto to pay attention to internationality and we invest a lot in the readability and clarity of our products. This increases safety in foodservice.”
5 steps towards a cleaner restaurant
- Think about how you can ease the work of visiting staff. Digital solution for hygiene plans, product information and procedures, eases the work of visiting chefs and rented work force. It’s easy to come work in a new restaurant when everything can be found from one digital place, an example of this is Kiilto’s Hyginet service. Visiting staff and chefs can check restaurant specific information from the service and also see e.g. hygiene history and test results.
- Pay attention to safe surfaces. In kitchen this means that everyone must take their own responsibility and continuously take actions towards more hygienic surfaces. Disinfection of surfaces between different food preparations, proper use of kitchenware, dishwashing and HACCP overview, are things to keep in mind. Mind your workstation and your tools, take personal responsibility of making it safe for everyone by caring for both personal and surface hygiene with proper measurements of cleaners according to instructions. To enhance surface cleanliness, remember spray-wipe-spray method or if you are using wipes, wipe-discard-wipe.
- Consider the new forms of business, such as takeaway and home deliveries, in the hygiene plan. Takeaway delivieries have become more popular and a part of many restaurants’ mundane activities. Ready-to-use products and wipes are easy to use and are taking care of good hygiene on the go.
- Provide an opportunity to wash and disinfect hands both for the staff, the restaurant visitors and food delivery personnel. Good places for hand disinfectant are on the counter, on restaurant tables and close to the door. If possible, place a non-touchable disinfection device close to the door. People can disinfect their hands when coming in and going out from your premises. Disinfection wipes for hands are a nice addition to take away deliveries.
- Remember that training and communication with staff about hygiene plans is important. It also increases the safety when all guidelines are easy to check, and everyone knows where the information is available. Read more about Hyginet as an educational and communication tool.