“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

Every foodservice operator has asked themselves at one point or another, “Are we (staff included) truly prepared to deal with a foodborne illness situation or crisis?” Luckily for operators there are many resources they can rely on to help them respond to issues or prepare for crisis management.

Monitoring

Many foodservice operators have been forced to add another layer of responsibility in order to successfully manage their business and this is in the way of Social Media monitoring. They have come to realize the importance of knowing what issues might be lurking and what others are talking about so that they not only learn from others, but also to help them better prepare if they should be next in line to deal with a crisis.

Vulnerability Inspections

Foodservice operators are being more proactive to avoid a crisis from negatively impacting their business. One way they are doing this is by hiring a third-party auditor/consultant or food safety coach to spend time training their employees as a preventative measure. This is a very pro-active approach to ensure that specific employees are responsible for properly managing areas with potential risk.

Here are some examples of what these third-party auditors assist with:

• Implement food safety practices with HACCP programs and training
• Proper receiving and storing food safely
• Prepare and serve safe food
• Clean and sanitation
• Develop a food safety minded culture
• Develop a crisis response program
• Help you pass inspections with flying colors

Interactive Training

Companies lean on their employees—both the more experienced workers and new hires—to always follow food safety procedures, but challenges of busy rush hours and lack of staff often disrupt proper execution. The effects of such slip-ups on the company brand can be substantial.
Operators are keeping their employees engaged and helping them retain food safety practices through interactive training. They are turning to sophisticated, interactive, and even bilingual training tools to assure learning comprehension and mitigate the risk.

These are just a few examples of things foodservice operators are “doing differently” but nonetheless throughout all of our Kitchen Conversations it was made very clear that Food Safety needs to be deeply rooted into a company’s culture starting at the top, otherwise it is pointless.

Food Safety should always be first and foremost about protecting lives. As business owners it also is about protecting your brand. For more food safety solutions for foodservice operators visit www.cambro.com/storesafe.