Top 10 Strategies to Cultivate a Strong and Lasting Food Safety Culture
List Compiled by: ANFP Staff
1. Empower staff with digital probe thermometers. Provide every foodservice employee with a personal digital probe thermometer. Train staff to use thermometers beyond steam table logs, constantly monitor reheating and cooling processes to prevent temperature-related issues.
2. Focus on comprehensive food labeling and storage. Emphasize proper labeling, dating, and storage after food preparation. Simplify the labeling process by hanging a roll of blue painter’s tape and a marker near coolers. Post dating timelines inside for easy reference, promoting the organization and reducing errors.
3. Implement regular cleaning and deep-cleaning schedule. Reinforce the importance of regular cleaning for floors, walls, equipment, and utensils. Implement a weekly/monthly deep-cleaning schedule for kitchen equipment and daily-use areas, ensuring a consistently clean and well-organized kitchen.
4. Monitor sanitization with test strips. Keep strips readily available to check sanitizer concentration in dish machines, sinks, and sani-buckets. If using hot water in the dishmachine for sanitization, mandate use of Maximum Registering Thermometers (MRT) or heat-sensitive test strips to ensure surface of the dishes reach the required temperature.
5. Promote personal hygiene and handwashing. Highlight personal responsibility in food safety, emphasizing that the first line of defense is the individual. Keep hand-washing sinks stocked with soap and paper towels. Encourage employees to wash their hands twice before donning gloves due to potential filth on cell phones.
6. Use phone cubbies and proactive policies. Install phone cubbies next to hand-washing sinks to prevent distractions during crucial hygiene moments. Enforce policies requiring employees to store phones in the cubby, allowing for efficient handwashing, message checks, and gloving up before returning to work.
7. Use gloves as complements, not substitutes. Educate staff that gloves are not an excuse to skip handwashing. Reinforce a commitment to hygiene by mandating handwashing and glove changes when shifting tasks, moving between raw and ready-to-eat food, picking items off the floor, and other tasks that contribute to contamination.
8. Have dedicated hand-washing sinks. Clarify the purpose of hand-washing sinks, emphasizing they are for hands only and not for dumping items. Prevent health code violations by ensuring that sinks remain dedicated to maintaining hand hygiene standards.
9. Provide food safety training for all. Implement food safety training for everyone in the kitchen, including dietary aides, cashiers, supervisors, and managers.
10. Strive for continuous improvement through feedback. Foster a collaborative environment committed to learning and growth by encouraging staff to share insights, suggestions, and concerns related to food safety.
Download a printable flyer below with the information on this page.