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Duties of a MN Certified Food Manager

What Are The Duties Of A MN Certified Food Manager?

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Whether you have the title of kitchen manager, executive chef or food and beverage supervisor, we know that you have a myriad of duties that require your constant attention. You write budgets, calculate food costs, hire staff and train employees. On top of that, are the duties of a MN certified food manager. The state has outlined very specific responsibilities that help you keep the food you serve safe.

Duties of a MN Certified Food Manager

On the Job Duties of a MN Certified Food Manager

Once you complete training and gain your food manager certificate, the Minnesota Department of Health requires you to perform the following duties:

  • Identify food safety hazards in your facility
  • Implement procedures to prevent food-borne illness
  • Perform food safety training and insure a person in charge (PIC) is present when food is prepared
  • Monitor food preparation and take action to correct procedures to protect the public from food-borne illness
  • Conduct inspections to ensure proper food handling occurs during regular operations

As a MN certified food manager, your obligations go beyond the day-to-day operations of your business, and you must keep the food your operation serves safe. Identification of hazards is your first step towards food safety, but you must act on your observations. Nearly every one of the requirements for food managers can be seen as a reaction to the hazards that you have identified.

Proper implementation of procedures goes a long way to preventing the spread of food-borne illness. The key to effective food-safety protocols include training, monitoring and a keeping written track record for reference. It does no good to simply train one or two employees and let your procedures spread from there. Take the time to train your entire staff on proper food-handling techniques, especially those that might be unique to your establishment and the type of product you serve or sell.

Finally, you must follow up on your identification and procedure implementation by monitoring day-to-day operations to ensure procedures are followed properly. Conducting periodic self-inspections of your facility is also a great tool to monitor how food is handled. Be thorough when you conduct your self-inspection. Act as if you were your local health inspector and check every aspect of your facility. Conduct a verbal review with your employees and make sure that any potential hazards are being dealt with properly.

Do you have any tips for keeping track of your duties of a MN certified food manager?

ServSafe Food Manager Communications

Communication Between the ServSafe Food Manager and Staff

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The ServSafe food manager’s duties cover many areas of their facility, and they need each member of their staff to understand their role and know what their daily tasks may be. Effective communication not only keeps your kitchen staff on the same page, it frees up your time by allowing you to go about your duties without constantly answering questions and covering the same material a multitude of times with different team members.

Effective Communication Tips for the ServSafe Food Manager

In our discussions with chefs, food preparation supervisors and other students who come to us for ServSafe food manager certification, we’ve found a few communication tools you may find helpful:

  • Daily log books
  • Printed task and daily goal sheets
  • Pre-shift staff meetings
  • Regular manager meetings
  • Periodic meetings with all staff members

We believe that having a written track record or goals and tasks it a great way to make sure that everyone knows what needs to be accomplished. The food industry moves at an incredibly fast pace, so relying on memory may not be the best solution. If just one of your staff members forgets an essential task, your well-oiled machine can quickly turn into a rusty locomotive careening towards disaster. This is where a log book documenting shortages, problems with the production line or areas that could use improvement comes in handy. Also, prep sheets, written par quotas and documented daily maintenance procedures will let your staff know what lies ahead with minimum interaction.

While written communication is fine for some situations, a recurring formal meeting of some kind can easily streamline your communication channels. This allows for all key employees to be in the same place at the same time, bring up issues, provide clarity between different aspects of your operation and make sure everyone is one the same page without confusion later.

These meetings can take different forms. An all-staff meeting may be necessary if new procedures are being introduced, if there are wide scale menu changes or if you feel the need for regular reinforcement of your company’s goals. Regular meetings with every employee in attendance may not work for larger businesses. In these cases, department heads, shift-supervisors or groups of managers can meet separately and then hold meetings with the employees under their direct supervision.

All too often, important information is disseminated in passing and can become forgotten or misunderstood. What communication techniques do you use to keep your team on the same page?

Online ServSafe Guide to Raw Egg Handling

Online ServSafe Guide to Raw Egg Handling

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In the month of April, a supplier of eggs to the East Coastrecalled whole shell eggs due to a number of cases of Salmonella illnesses that may have been linked to their product. Even though it appears Minnesota escaped this risk unscathed, now would still be a good time for an online ServSafe review of raw egg handling habits.

Raw Shell Egg Handling Procedures

Many Salmonella cases result from improper cooking or handling procedures. Most outbreaks can be avoided by following a few simple steps:

  • Fully cook products with raw egg ingredients
  • Use liquid pasteurized eggs when possible
  • Do not pool raw shell eggs
  • Always wash your hands after handling raw eggs

The Minnesota Food Code states that all raw shell eggs must be cooked to a temperature of 145 degrees. This does not mean that restaurants and outlets that offer breakfast service are prohibited from serving their eggs sunny side up or over easy. If you offer eggs on your menu, customers who verbally request them undercooked can receive them if the eggs are cooked and served immediately. In order to be in full compliance with the rules to serve undercooked eggs or other animal products a clearly visible warning that consuming undercooked animal product comes with health risks needs to be included on your menu.

For dishes such as omelets, scrambled eggs or any other product that does not require a whole shell egg, pasteurized liquid eggs should be used. These liquid eggs should replace any kind of egg pooling procedure. Egg pooling occurs when multiple whole raw shell eggs are cracked and stored in the same container. Putting large numbers of cracked raw eggs in one container greatly increases the risk of the spread of Salmonella.

Whether this topic is covered in online ServSafe training or one of our instructor led courses, we inevitably hear from chefs who claim that some recipes do not work with liquid eggs. In these cases, you may wish to use whole pasteurized shell eggs or consult your local health department to discuss solutions and alternatives for your ingredients.

Certified Food Manager and Major Recalls

The Certified Food Managers and Major Recalls

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Last month, an outbreak of E.coli linked to romaine lettuce from Arizona left grocery store produce sections bare and certified food managers scrambling to find replacement ingredients for salads after a large amount of available product was pulled from the supply chain. When such an important ingredient suddenly becomes a potential food-borne illness risk, several steps must be taken.

Certified Food Manager and Major Recalls

Image Credit: JBSA Photo Gallery

Romaine Contamination and Certified Food Managers Reaction

The first step when news of a recall like this breaks must be to stop serving any potentially contaminated product. In this case, most romaine in restaurants and other food preparation outlets had to be thrown away. We must urge that you always take immediate and extreme action when something of this nature occurs. It would be better to err on the side of caution rather than contribute to an E.coli outbreak.

Due to the time of year, this recall affected much of the country. Cold spring weather in many states means suppliers need to rely on farmers in states such as Arizona where the weather is warm enough for this type of produce. Drastic action to recall lettuce was taken due to 98 potential cases in 22 states.

Once certified food managers remove product, they are left with a situation that compromises the availability of many items on their menu. So how does a kitchen manager adjust?

First, certified food managers should be up front and open with their guests. Placing a notice in the menu or in a visible location at a service counter, hostess station or cashier stand should be the first step. Your customers will understand if you let them know there has been a recall and, in the best interests of their health, you are unable to serve certain menu items for a short period of time.

Fortunately, with something such as romaine lettuce there are alternative ingredients. Green leaf or iceberg can serve as a temporary replacement if that is something that would be acceptable to your customers.

With the advances in technology and communication, many of these outbreaks have been contained before they become major disasters. How do you react when you have to pull product off of your shelves due to a recall?