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Why every hospitality business should prioritise food safety

Re

Renner James


3 minutes

Food safety is the essence of a good hospitality business. Food safety must be at the core of your entire business operations, be it a hotel, cafeteria, restaurant, caterer, or a personal private dining operation, where food is being stored, prepared, and served to your staff and customers to ensure it remains safe to eat.

What if you don’t know: handling and hygiene at work. Food hygiene training and supervision in your business. Your food business staff should receive suitable food hygiene training and supervision for the type of work they do. The FSA suggests providing food handlers with training that is proportionate to the risks of their work.

Creating a Positive Food Safety Culture

Food safety training isn’t just a one-off thing. It’s something that has to become part of your life in the hospitality industry every day. When your staff is trained properly, they will not only know what to do, but understand why it’s essential that they do it.

Having food safety training means employees are much more aware of how they can help reduce foodborne illness through correct handwashing, avoiding cross-contamination of ingredients, storing foods at the right temperatures, and, naturally, the hygienic handling of ingredients.

Food safety training may be applicable to catering companies in Surrey; your staff members may consist of both permanent and temporary employees, chefs, waiting staff, and kitchen porters, who may have varying levels of experience. By providing relevant training, your staff will be clear on what is expected of them and that standard hygiene practices are adhered to.

Flexible Learning Opportunities for Your Busy Hospitality Team

Many employers might face the difficulty of fitting training within your employees’ often constrained timetable of working evenings, weekends and split shifts.

Food Safety Online Training can be delivered to your employees anytime that suits you. Deliver your training outside of your operating hours so you do not affect your operational effectiveness whilst ensuring your staff are all learning the same thing at the same time.

Online learning can also be used as part of induction training for new staff. New starters can do their induction learning online in their first days at work. They can then reinforce their knowledge through on-the-job training.

Reducing Food Safety Hazards in the Commercial Kitchen

That minor kitchen accident, like a sudden drop in a commercial oven temperature, could spell disaster. Food not properly stored, cross-contamination, poor cleaning, and temperature checks that are ignored all add up to one too many dirty customers.

Food safety training helps employees identify potential risks and learn how to manage them. They will learn the best way to store ingredients and how to maintain a clean workspace, handle food correctly, and complete cleaning schedules.

It will be good to know about Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP). Control-oriented, HACCP-based systems enable companies to identify potential hazards and implement control measures and verify effective control.

Training must ensure staff know how to communicate allergen information to customers, answer customer queries about allergens, and prevent cross-contact of allergens during food handling.

Supporting Compliance and Professional Standards

Having good training records will show that your hospitality business maintains food safety. You may have trained all of your food handlers, but not all UK food handlers need a food hygiene certificate. However, food business operators must be able to show they have appropriately instructed, trained and supervised staff.

Food safety awareness may require revision at a later date when there has been a revision of the menu, equipment, procedures and work practices. Recurrent training will contribute to this process and show that your staff can be supported to comply with the Food safety standards.

Provided you are trained, supported, supervised, and have good food safety management, you can help maintain standards and ensure the business passes any audit.

Invest in Your Hospitality Team

As a business, you understand the importance of having dedicated staff, an efficient way of doing business, and high professionalism to provide quality service in the hospitality industry. The appropriate Food Safety Online Training can educate, motivate, and promote a safer way of working on a daily basis.

No matter who you’re recruiting in the hospitality industry, whether you’re recruiting all your restaurant staff, just recruiting new kitchen assistants, or still have your experienced staff on site, it’s vital you have your food safety training in place. Keep both customers and your restaurant, bar, or café safe.

If you are interested in seeing the Food Safety training and expert Hospitality support that we offer, please take a look at Operational Chef Consultant.


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