Christine Dantz, Author at Safe Food For Thought

April 11, 2022March 23, 2022

ServSafe Food Manager Training and Latex in the Kitchen

When allergies are discussed in ServSafe food manager training, we often cover allergen culprits that are ingested such as nuts, shellfish and dairy, but there are other allergens such as latex that causes a reaction on contact. While severe latex reactions to minimal contact are rare, they can happen so it’s best to be prepared in the event one of your staff or a guest suffers from a latex allergy.

How ServSafe Food Managers can Prevent Allergic Reactions to Latex

It’s important to make sure that ready-to-eat foods are never touched with bare hands, and in order to prevent bare-hand contact many ServSafe food managers stock their kitchen with latex food-service gloves. This will be the most common source of a reaction to those who are allergic. If any of your staff is allergic or sensitive to latex, you’ll most likely see a mild to severe skin reaction including:

Excessively dry skin
Itchy rashes
Cracked and bleeding skin
Numbness in the fingers

While you may never see an allergic reaction outside of your kitchen staff, there are some who are sensitive to minimal contact from latex powder or food that has come into contact with latex. If you have a guest that is severely allergic to latex, they may experience:

Throat soreness or swelling
Nasal irritation or bloody nose
Gum, mouth or tongue irritation and swelling

If you’re a ServSafe food manager who has an employee who is sensitive to latex, or want to be prepared in the event you have a guest alert you to a severe latex allergy, we suggest you keep some vinyl food service gloves on hand. Vinyl gloves may not fit as snuggly as latex, but it’s best to be prepared for those who are allergic.

Do you provide your staff with an alternative to latex food-service gloves?

April 4, 2022March 22, 2022

CFPMs Take Advantage Of The New Meal Kit Market

Restaurant patrons have taken to cooking at home more over the past few years, and this gives food businesses and restaurants the opportunity to take advantage of this new market. If you’re looking for a way to reach new customers and give them a chance to cook their favorite menu items at home, you may want to consider offering meal kits with everything they need to prepare their favorite dish. Since you’re not cooking these meals in-house, there’s a different set of challenges involved. Let’s consider what Certified Food Managers ( CFPMs ) should consider when preparing meal kits for customers to cook at home.

CFPMs Food Safety Challenges for Take Home Meal Kits

Meal kits can help boost your business, but certified food protection managers must make your staff aware of the unique food safety hazards is the key to doing it safely. Your kit can include raw protein ingredients, fresh vegetables, cooked products and dried spices, so there are several different food handling rules you have to consider.

The biggest concern will be cross-contamination during preparation and packaging. Make sure all fresh ingredients are stored away from raw products at all times. If you sell these kits at high volume, have your certified food protection manager designate space in your walk-in refrigeration so there can be no risk of cross-contamination during storage.

The highest risk of cross-contamination may occur during packaging. Many of these meal kits fit into one large box, so keeping raw food separated from fresh ingredients can create some difficulties. If you do use one large box for these kits, we suggest tightly sealed and separate containers for raw ingredients. We’d also recommend taking it a step further and placing these sealed containers in a separate box within the larger crate for dual-layer protection. It’s also important to consider some sort of cold pack or ice bag to keep cold foods cold during transport.

Since you’re not cooking these items in your establishment, temperature control is left up to the consumer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to give them the information they need to cook every ingredient properly. Include incredibly detailed recipe cards that list proper cooking temperatures. You can experiment with cooking times of meal kit ingredients in your restaurant and include that information, but CFPMs should remember not every oven will cook at precisely the same rate. Include warnings that will indicate the properly cooked temperature for each ingredient. You may even wish to go so far as to offer probe thermometers at an additional cost.

Are you using meal kits as a way to reach new customers?

March 29, 2022March 22, 2022

How To Create A Culture Of Food Safety

Certified ServSafe food managers have the duty to ensure that the food they serve is safe and that their operation adheres to the Minnesota food code, but can they do more to make food safety a habit rather than simple compliance? Creating a culture in your establishment that promotes food safety rather than code compliance greatly reduces the risk of spreading foodborne illness.

Five Tips for Creating a Food Safety Culture

Keeping your entire staff focused on food safety improves awareness concerning foodborne illness risks and keeps food safety on everyone’s mind. Here are five ways ServeSafe food managers can build a food safety culture in their businesses:

Management Modeling
Explain the Science
Ease Access to Food Safety Tools
Keep Logs
Bring in and Expert for Training

A food safety culture starts at the top, and ServSafe food managers need to lead by example. If you model a pro-food safety attitude, your staff is sure to follow. If your staff sees that food safety is serious, and they know why, then they’ll be more diligent in keeping food safe. Beyond modeling food safety, explaining the science behind food safety regulations helps show the consequences of lax attention to food code rules. Make sure you not only demonstrate how, but explain why your food safety procedures have been implemented.

If you are trying to promote food safety values, it’s also important that your staff has easy access to the tools and record keeping logs that aid in keeping food safe. Make sure every station is stocked with the equipment to prevent bare-hand contact, test temperature of hot and cold product and sanitation. If there’s no readily available equipment to follow food safety procedures, the chances for taking shortcuts increase. You should also consider making record keeping logs available. Temperature logs for held food, product dating notebooks and inventory control logs will paint a visual picture of important procedures that keep food illness risk low.

Finally, an outside view of your establishment can open your staffs eyes to food safety risks they may not have been previously aware of. Bringing in a third-party expert for on-site training tailored to your unique facility gives you a focused look at how food safety can work in your food business.

How do you foster a culture of food safety in your establishment?

March 28, 2022March 28, 2022

A Tribute To Doug Nick Founder Of Safe Food Training

On January 16^th of this year our friend and founder of Safe Food Training, Doug Nick passed away unexpectedly. Doug founded the company in 1998 and built it from the ground up. He retired from the business operations in 2011 but stayed active as an instructor for several years after that.

Doug founded Safe Food Training with the intent of providing an informative and productive learning environment that also was fun and interactive. He would often say people do not learn well when they are bored to tears. We adhere to those principals to this day.

Doug was a business partner, friend and mentor for me and I truly appreciate all that he did for myself and the business to assure it would continue to thrive.

There are a few people in your life who really make a huge and positive lasting impact. Doug Nick was one of those people in my life and I am forever grateful.

You are missed.

Tim Niles