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Food Safety and Sanitation

 

 Preparing for a visit from the health inspector.

Preparing for an inspection from the state health inspector, also known as “the Man” or “The Boogie Man" is always an interesting experience. It would make a great reality TV show. The tension in a restaurant is always at a peak when it's known that the inspector is coming. The tension is even higher then when a food critic or travel writer is seen dining in the restaurant. When the health inspector is making an inspection, everyone tiptoes around; it's so quiet you could hear a fork drop in the dining room.

Make sure your staff doesn't have to run around at the last minute “cleaning” and “labeling". Every state has slightly different health inspection laws and different things that they deduct points for.

The basic tenents of surviving a health inspection and getting a high score remain the same everywhere.  Keep surfaces and food storage areas as clean as possible. It is a challenge to keep an entire kitchen clean as a whistle all the time, but having each employee spend several extra minutes each day keeping areas clean can save time and hassle. The time it takes to scrub a hood system off that hasn't been cleaned for several months and to scrub around the edges of the prep tables makes a 5 minute job take hours in the long run. It's not the most pleasant thing to do right before “The Man” comes.

Make sure your food is properly stored, labeled and dated. Flours and other bulk products should be labeled and stored in airtight containers. Perishable items must be kept at the proper refrigerated temperatures and labeled and dated.  The inspectors do check refrigeration and freezer temperature so make sure the compressors are working properly and you have thermometers openly displayed.

A few common easily avoidable mistakes that restaurants make; include not following proper cooling procedures for hot items. Many times, a cook will place a large plastic bucket of hot stock in the walk-in to cool it off, instead of following the proper procedures about cooling by placing the bucket in an ice bath and bringing it down to a safe temperature.

Another common mistake is to group edible food products below a shelf with cleaning chemicals above it. It does not matter that the chemicals are sealed tight and unopened and the box of crackers below it is taped shut with the crackers sealed in plastic. The health inspector doesn't care about the potential that the crackers would be safe if a chemical container fell over. He or she will deduct points for it because it's against code.

Make sure your food is properly stored,
labeled and dated!.