Food Safety Tips for Restaurant During COVID-19
1. Send Staff Home If They Show Symptoms
Food safety begins with the individuals who are preparing & serving meals. You must set an example if you want your restaurant/hotel employees to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously. If any of your staff have cold symptoms – even mild ones, send them home. Now is not the time to ask them to jump through hoops like getting a doctor’s note.
People with flu-like symptoms who haven’t yet been tested for COVID-19 should stay home for at least 72 hours after their fever has passed, & for at least 7 days since their symptoms began, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
You can offer sick leave pay to your staff if your restaurant is in a position to do so – you may even be required to offer paid time off, so be sure to check federal & state laws before making this decision (keep in mind, these are changing on a regular basis).
Even more than authorities, you don’t want anyone feeling like they have to rush back to work in order to pay their bills. You should also ensure that your employees know where to access information about COVID-19 testing & government financial assistance programs. Use Advance Hygiene Solutions in your hotel to prevent coronavirus.
2. Make Handwashing Mandatory
Forget simply encouraging extra handwashing. Now is the time to make handwashing with soap & water for at least 20 seconds mandatory in various situations, including:
· When staff arrive at your restaurant
· Between each order they prepare
· After touching shared surfaces
· After a meal or a smoke break
· After bathroom breaks
· After handling money
· After cleaning the restaurant
· When they leave for the day
Stock your restaurant’s handwashing stations with soap & towels, & ensure that hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol is available in multiple spots around the front & back of house. Put pictures up with handwashing information & remind staff vocally every day that you expect everyone to ramp up their handwashing efforts to help slow the spread of COVID-19. Improve your hand hygiene solutions in your hotels.
3. Limit Food Handling
Personal hygiene is imperative when it comes to protecting against the coronavirus, but you can take measures a step further by limiting the number of people who handle food & food packaging in your restaurant. You may need to rethink the flow of your kitchen line if possible, to have fewer staff involved in meal prep, as long as you continue to handle raw & cooked food separately.
Ensure that your employees who are handling food are well versed in restaurant food safety guidelines & procedures. This might be the time to revisit what was cultured when your back-of-house staff got their food handlers permit, which included personal hygiene, sanitation, food safety, allergens, & food temperature.
4. Clean – And Then Clean Again
Before, during, & after shifts, now is the time to up your cleaning game. Exactly how long the coronavirus can stay on surfaces has not yet been confirmed, so be diligent in regularly wiping down counters & cleaning cookware, tableware, utensils, & high-contact surfaces like door handles.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published a list of cleaning products that you can use as disinfectants to protect against COVID-19. To check whether the products in your restaurant are safe to use, simply check the EPA registration number on the product to the list (don’t go by the brand name). Use Disinfectant Professional 100 to clean your surface again and again.
Restaurateurs north of the border can refer to Health Canada’s list of hard-surface disinfectants & match the Drug Identification Number on the product label to the list.
5. Equip Drivers with Information & Protection
Restaurateurs can take various steps to protect their delivery drivers from contact to the coronavirus, starting by outlining delivery instructions at the point when a customer places their order online or over the phone.
Many restaurants have begun doing contactless drop-offs to comply with social distancing.
Through contactless drop-off, the customer pays in advance & the driver leaves the package of food outside the door so that 2 parties do not interact.
Since people are able to place these orders online & request contactless drop-off, it provides additional layer of protection between your staff or drivers & the public – many businesses who didn’t offer online ordering before are shifting their offering for this reason. You want people to place orders without coming into the restaurant, whenever possible.
You’ll want to make sure to highlight online ordering offers & new delivery practices on your website & social media channels. Make sure staff taking food orders are alert of any contactless instructions & have them connect what’s available to customers. Keep disinfection tunnel outside you hotel which will help to avoid coronavirus germs to enter the hotel.
If you choose not to add your own online ordering system & delivery fleet, & instead work with a third-party delivery app with a delivery app like Uber Eats, they likely have already implemented these precautions. Research what measures they’re taking so you can relay these to customers as well.
If you’re working with your own fleet, provide your delivery drivers with hand sanitizer & gloves to further protect them from COVID-19. Inform your drivers that if they do receive cash tips, they should wash or sanitize their hands instantly afterward. Drivers can ask customers to use their own pen to sign any receipts, instead of lending them a pen. Or, opt for contactless payments made either over the phone with card-not-present transactions, through your website, or with a tap-enabled payment terminal.
6. Handle Packages Properly
You & your restaurant staff will certainly have to touch some food packages to fulfill orders, and you’ll have to work together to do so safely. Instead, keep the item down on a table, then walk away from the table so the other person can pick it up safely.
As much as it may pain you from an environmental standpoint to use items wrapped in plastic, you should remove any loose takeout cutlery or napkins from your restaurant. These items all hold the potential for cross-contamination. Ask guests if they need these items – if many are eating from home, they might be fine to take their order without.
7. Be Smart with Suppliers
It’s important to protect your suppliers, as well as your guests & employees. You can use the same contactless drop-off method with suppliers that you do with delivery customers.
Also, ask your suppliers what precautions they’re putting in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 so that you can communicate this information to your staff & customers.
In addition to implementing these restaurant food safety tips, look into your local, state, or federal laws before finalizing or communicating your restaurant’s approach to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. These are the best sources for up-to-date information during a situation that is changing by the day.