Safe Food Handling Could Save Your Business
Whether at the Chez Michael restaurant, the Heron Rock Bistro or the 4 Mile Restaurant & Pub or for that matter, any restaurant at all in Melbourne, food safety is vitally important. No matter how fantastic your business may be, a simply food handling mistake by your staff could be a serious, even insurmountable setback to your business.
The restaurant business is all about repeat customers and public perception of your establishment. Your reputation is everything. If you have even one lawsuit concerning food handling or food preparation mistakes in your kitchen, it can spell disaster- not just for legal defense fees, either. Your reputation could be seriously harmed, even ruined.
Not only do you need to take certain basic steps and make sure all of your kitchen employees always do in order to prevent directly harming customers with something like food poisoning, you also have to do things right for the sanitation inspectors who may decide to drop in on you and see how you really run things. Even an employee who sees food handling mistakes in the kitchen may squeal on you, especially if they ever lose their job.
There is more to all of this than just proper waste disposal and correctly storing food.
You must keep all food preparation areas clean at all times. This sounds easy but is often neglected as well. Different cutting boards have to be used for cutting meat, vegetables and seafood. Some restaurants use stainless steel counters for this as they are very easy to clean. This tends to dull knives and can also give an off flavor to meats - harmless, but hardly desirable. Better than this are plastic cutting boards which are very sanitary compared to wooden cutting boards and are easy to clean as well. After each use, cutting boards must be washed very thoroughly. Bleach may be used - but be sure to rinse very well afterwards if you are using bleach to clean your cutting boards.
Utensils need to be washed as well after each meal preparation in which they are used.
To ensure that all harmful bacteria have been killed, meats have to be cooked to a minimum internal temperature - 69 degrees for pork and red meats, 74 degrees for seafood. Even if a customer orders a rare steak, it must be cooked to 69 degrees for at least 15 seconds to reduce the risk of food poisoning. If you have any meats which are not definitely fresh, then you must make sure to prepare them very well done.
Preparing raw foods such as sushi requires extreme care. Serving these foods really means that you have to just have a top-notch clean kitchen and preparation staff, period, in addition to making doubly sure your sushi supplier is very sanitary. Disposable gloves and hair coverings or tie-backs must always be worn by people handling sushi and the preparation area should be kept so clean that, as the saying goes, one could eat off the floor. Any sushi that is not at its freshest needs to be thrown out.
It is surprising how many kitchen workers neglect to wash their hands with soap and hot water in between meal preparation, even when raw meat is involved. Hand washing between meal preparations is a must and washing hands in between say, handling meat and vegetables is a very good idea.
By enforcing a strict kitchen sanitation and food handling program, you will be protecting the interests of your customers as well as those of your restaurant.
