The 3 Cs Of Food-Safety Culture

Food safety is something that should be practiced at all stages of food preparation to ensure that no one gets sick when eating out. It’s important to hold employees accountable for upholding these standards because they ultimately affect how much people enjoy their meal. If someone sees an employee drop trash on the floor then it might leave them with a negative impression about the restaurant as well as making them more likely to get sick from an illness such as E-coli if you don't practice proper hygiene while preparing foods. In order to prevent contamination of food, restaurant management should provide the right uniforms and tools to their staff, such as chef coats, bib aprons and hats. There are many suppliers who provide shirts, coats and chef hats for sale to the hospitality industry and getting the right uniforms isn’t difficult.

The three C’s of food safety are:

1. CLEAN

Don't cross-contaminate food with dirty hands, surfaces, or utensils. Keeping a clean restaurant is one of the most important things that restaurants can do in order to prevent food-borne illnesses from happening. Restaurants need to make sure their employees are washing their hands before and after they handle food, wiping down surfaces with sanitizer or disinfectant spray, using separate cutting boards for meat products versus fruit & vegetables etc. Cross-contamination of food can occur when there is an incident with the product. This can be caused by employees not washing their hands or surfaces before and after handling food, or mixing up utensils when they're preparing products.

Here are a few tips on keeping a clean kitchen free of cross-contamination of the food you are preparing:

• Avoid using the same cutting board for meat and produce. Use separate boards for meats and fruits or vegetables, as there is a higher risk of cross-contamination occurring if you use one cutting board. If possible, it's best to have two separate sets of utensils; one set used specifically for meats and another set just for fruit & vegetables.
• Make sure all employees are thoroughly washing their hands before they start working with food products. Employees should also be wearing gloves or using sanitizer when handling different types of foods that may contain harmful bacteria such as seafood, poultry, beef, etc., to avoid coming into contact with a contaminated product during preparation.
• Keep surfaces clean by wiping them down after each use.
• Regularly checking your refrigeration at a minimum of once per day is crucial for maintaining food safety, as well as the cleanliness and hygiene of equipment. If you find that there's standing water in your drains then this could mean that something has gone wrong with your system or that it needs to be flushed out.
• Properly storing the food items is the next step in preventing food-borne illnesses.

1. COOK

The second C of food safety is cook, which means cooking the food to the proper doneness (for example, cooking ground beef until it is browned) and for the recommended length of time. The USDA recommends that all raw meat be cooked at a minimum internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit as measured by a digital thermometer. The time taken to cook certain food items is also important and should be closely monitored. For example, ground beef should not sit out for any longer than two hours at room temperature or one hour if the ambient air temperature is above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

1. CHILL

The third C in food safety is Chill. This essentially means that perishable food should be refrigerated within two hours of cooking it. This is because when cooked, bacteria begin to grow and multiply which can make you sick if the food isn't stored properly.

Some people might feel it is not necessary to refrigerate certain food immediately, but this is not the case if you want to have a safe and healthy meal. For instance, if you were to refrigerate a ham sandwich immediately after it was made then there would be little chance that bacteria could grow on the food because it is cold. However, when one hour has passed then this might no longer be the case and can make people sick.

These are the three C's in ensuring food safety within your restaurant. If following them makes sense for your company then implementing some or all of them will help keep customers happy as well as keeping everyone safe from getting sick due to poorly handled perishable foods.