Keep your MN kitchen running smoothly. We’re sharing real-world ServSafe & NEHA Best Practices to help you train staff and ace your next health inspection.

ServSafe Food Managers Keep Food Safe

How ServSafe Food Managers Keep Food Safe During High Volume

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Once February 14th hits, ServSafe food managers can expect their business double, triple or even quadruple for a few days compared to the norm. We believe food safety protocols should be followed to the letter no matter how busy it is, so this week we’ll take a look at common lapses during high volume and how ServSafe food managers can keep food safe

ServSafe Food Managers Keep Food Safe
Image credit: weedezign via 123 RF

ServSafe Food Manager Certification Standards for Food Safety While The Kitchen Is At Capacity

When we get busy, we sometimes tend to focus on our main goal, and when it’s food service on one of the busiest days of the year we’re talking about getting food to guests as quickly as possible so we can move on to the next order. It doesn’t matter if your receipt printer has spit tickets out in a string that reaches the floor or if you have a VIP at table three, food safety should be a high priority. Here are the two biggest neglected issues we see when restaurants get busier than average.

  • Handwashing
  • Barehand contact

Every ServSafe manager and food service employee should have it engrained in their mind to wash their hands frequently, and during exceptionally busy nights, handwashing can be neglected or just improperly performed. Handwashing needs to happen often, and it needs to be done right. We’re not talking about a quick rinse in lukewarm water with a dab of soap, we’re talking about proper 20-second handwashing with plenty of soap and hot water. We get it, 20 seconds seems like an eternity with servers pestering cooks looking for an ETA on their favorite guests’ meals or when the ding of the order printer ceaselessly calls you back to the line, but 20 seconds could be the difference between safe food and a sick guest.

Barehand contact rules can also be easily forgotten under duress. Tongs or gloves must be used when handling ready-to-eat foods and hands must be washed when changing gloves. To keep this freshly in your staff’s mind, make preparations to stock extra boxes of single-use food-service gloves anywhere in the kitchen where they’ll be used. Remind your employees that gloves are no substitute for handwashing after using the restroom, eating or handling raw ingredients.

Do you have any other tips to help fellow ServSafe food managers keep their food products safe this Valentine’s Day?

Hard-Boiled-Egg-Recall

The Problem with the Hard-Boiled Egg Recall for ServSafe Managers

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Recently, a listeria outbreak lead to a major recall of hard-boiled eggs produced by a company that supplies their product to restaurants, food processors and retailers. We’ve looked into this recall, and it appears that while some of these precooked hard-boiled eggs did make their way to grocery store shelves, most of them were shipped to food service establishments, and in some cases food preparers that have used these eggs as ingredients in other prepackaged ready-to-eat products. These kinds of recalls send up a red flag for us since ready-to-eat food recalls tend to escape the notice of ServSafe managers.

Hard-Boiled Egg Recall

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

ServSafe Managers and the Hard-Boiled Egg Recall

One of the biggest issues with the recall of a product such as pre-cooked hard-boiled eggs is awareness. Most of the recalls that draw the attention of ServSafe food managers involve raw product such as romaine lettuce, ground meats and other items used as ingredients. These outbreaks are usually wider spread and grab national headlines.

As stated in the FDA report, one major component of this recall included eggs shipped in five-pound containers for use in foodservice. Many operations bring in already cooked hard-boiled eggs as a time saver if they include whole eggs as part of breakfast service or prepare menu items made from hard-boiled eggs. The extent of this recall should be a wakeup call that foodservice professionals must be more vigilant with all ready-to-eat product they bring in to serve to guests and use as ingredients for certain recipes.

If you use precooked product in your establishment, you should frequently take a look at the FDA’s recall list. While many recalls of ready-to-eat food involve products shipped directly to grocery stores and consumers rather than food service businesses, there are times when contaminated prepared product ends up in industrial kitchens. Awareness and keeping alert for any recall will help prevent the spread of foodborne illness outbreaks.

Do you use already prepared product in your business?

smarter food safety product traceability

Applying Product Traceability Software for Smarter Food Safety

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Back in October, we covered a public forum put on by the FDA concerning the future of food safety. Just recently, the FDA has released the transcripts from nearly every session, giving those of us in the food safety training industry plenty of material to dig through concerning their vision for the future of food safety in our country. This week we’d like to take a look at a few of the ideas presented at the New Ara of Smarter Food Safety meeting involving the use of product traceability technology to quickly find the source of foodborne illness outbreaks.

Smarter Food Safety product traceability
Image credit:
mavoimage via 123.rf and United States Department of Agri via Flickr

Achieving Smarter Food Safety in the Supply Chain Using product Traceability Software

When it comes to foodborne illness tracing, it would be ideal if the FDA and CDC could immediately identify the source of contamination. For example, if someone consumes tainted lettuce in Minnesota and becomes ill, the FDA could find out the source of the contaminated product in New Mexico and take immediate action. This isn’t exactly possible with the way the supply chain works today.

Raw food products come from many different parts of the country, and certified food managers may receive a shipment of greens from California one week and Arizona the next. In fact, there are many occasions where the warehouse run by your food supplier has very little information about where your product originated. In the case of an outbreak, it takes some time to figure out exactly where the tainted product came from, potentially leaving the door open for the further spread of illness.

The big question is; How can we solve this?

During a Smarter Food Safetypresentation on product traceability, a spokesperson from the software company FoodLogiq suggested that advanced software could be used to create a roadmap for the entire supply chain. This would mean that software could be used at all levels of the supply chain from growers and farmers to individual food service facilities such as restaurants and retail producers to instantly tell you the travel history of any given product from farm to fork. But is this feasible?

We think this is a great idea, but it would take time to implement. As it stands now, there is no one high-tech method being endorsed for product traceability. That means one shipper could use a different system than another, and along the way product can’t be traced due to conflicting systems. There also appears to be little incentive for smaller operations to use this software. Small one outlet restaurants and independent farmers have enough on their plate without having to research, purchase and maintain tracking software.

If the FDA Era of Smarter Food Safety vision can come up with a product traceability standard to track nearly every single ingredient, foodborne illness outbreaks can be easily contained. Do you think an overarching tracing system could be implemented to track product and stop outbreaks before they become widespread?

Food Manager in Walkin Freezer

Why do ServSafe Food Managers Set Freezers to Zero Degrees?

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According to the Minnesota Food Code, all frozen food must remain frozen until ready to use and the USDA recommends setting freezers to zero degrees Fahrenheit. This got us wondering; why zero? Is zero a scientifically determined number, or is it in the correct temperature range and just happens to be a good round number? Will two degrees work just as well? Or maybe -12.5? This week we’ll take a good look at freezer temperatures and how zero degrees became the standard for ServSafe Food Managers.

Food manager in walk-in freezer
Image credit: 123rf

ServSafe Food Managers and Freezer Temperatures

The history of the standard of zero degrees goes back to the 1930s when the American Fruit and Vegetable Coalition advocated zero degree temperatures because it was, in fact, a round number. Prior to this, freezing recommendations had been set at 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Science didn’t even come into the conversation until much later.

According to the laws of thermodynamics and the use of a mathematical logarithm known as the Van’t-Hoff equation, scientists much smarter than us were able to show that there is a uniform lowering of the velocity of chemical reactions in any substance as temperatures decrease. To break it down in terms those of us without PhDs in chemistry and physics can understand, once the temperature reaches zero degrees, the molecules and atoms in frozen product slow to the point where there is little perceptible movement. This means that bacteria cease to grow and there is very little loss of nutrition in foods frozen below zero degrees. Using this method, it has been determined that the ideal range of freezer temperatures is between zero and -22 degrees Fahrenheit.

So now that we know why ServSafe food manager training tells us to keep freezers at zero degrees, why don’t we go further and freeze product closer to the low end of the range?

First, while bacteria are held at bay indefinitely, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a risk of freezer burn. Freezer burnt product may still be safe to eat from a food safety standpoint, but it sure isn’t pleasant from a taste and texture standpoint. Long exposure to extremely low temperatures will keep your food safe to eat but will tarnish its quality.

Finally, it’s unwise from an efficiency and energy use standpoint. Keeping your freezer at the upper end of the freezing range and closer to zero degrees will use a lot less electricity and keep utility costs down.

As a ServSafe food manager, what temperature do you set your freezer?