August 16
Consider using these restaurant safety tips to help bolster your company's daily operations:
1. Implement a Comprehensive Employee Safety Training Program
If your enterprise has not already instituted an employee restaurant safety training program for every person you hire, consider doing so as soon as possible. By making sure your employees understand the best food preparation, handling and serving practices, you'll avoid many potentially hazardous, embarrassing, and costly mistakes. In some jurisdictions, if your establishment holds a liquor license, employees will require a separate, additional training course focused on legal requirements for serving alcoholic beverages. Instituting comprehensive safety courses ultimately assists many firms in the hospitality industry in reducing potential liability for some types of errors.
2. Request a Courtesy Fire Marshall Inspection
Many local fire departments offer courtesy inspections. These informal visits may furnish useful safety tips to business owners about the best ways to safeguard the premises from fire-related accidents. Kitchen cooking fires account for over half of the home fires every year in many U.S. states. Do your employees know how to respond correctly if a blaze erupts at your commercial kitchen stove? Or how to assist a colleague whose clothing catches fire? Kitchen safety topics must include fire safety! Obtaining a courtesy inspection from your local fire department may help you prepare a useful, realistic fire safety plan for your business.
3. Purchase Sturdy Restaurant Furniture And Replace It On Schedule
Restaurant safety rules should include paying close attention to the condition of chairs, tables, bar stools, and booths. Savvy business owners want these assets to remain sources of pride. Never permit broken or worn furniture to remain in service. Recognize the furniture utilized in your establishment will receive much harder daily use than comparable items in private homes. Serious or even fatal injuries have occurred when people sit on chairs or bar stools which suddenly collapse. Similarly, as a restaurant, your business must ensure every table can support the full weight of hot dishes and beverages without wobbling or tipping. From a restaurant safety standpoint, we recommend replacing these furnishings at regular, predetermined intervals. This precaution helps reduce accidents while maintaining a stylish, trendy decor.
4. Maintain Flooring And Walkways
To help prevent accidental slips and falls, restaurant managers should consider regularly inspecting flooring in dining areas, kitchens, snd service entrances. Pay attention to surrounding walkways and parking lots, too. Loose carpets or slippery vinyl or cement surfaces sometimes contribute to nasty accidents, particularly in busy settings. Restaurant safety practices may include requesting periodic applications of protective coatings to help remove ice and snow and improve traction.
5. Devote Some Attention to Exterior Safety
If your restaurant employees or customers utilize a nearby parking lot or parking garage, include this facility within your restaurant safety planning. For example, do people leaving or entering the premises after dark travel in safety to (and from) parked vehicles or bus stops? It may prove helpful to increase your restaurant's exterior illumination and/or surveillance capabilities so people can enter the premises more securely through all entrances. Additionally, consider implementing a voluntary "buddy system" to enable employees to walk to parked vehicles or mass transit stops in groups at night. You'll benefit the morale of your work force and possibly also increase employee retention rates by maintaining concern for everyone's personal security.
6. Consider Establishing an Employee Safety Committee
In some situations, a restaurant benefits by creating one or more employee safety committees to monitor specific parts of the premises and recommend best safety practices. For example, if you maintain a large business, you might choose to establish one committee to oversee kitchen safety and another to enhance restroom safety. By encouraging employees to share your interest in promoting the best safety practices, you'll often help reinforce vital information relayed during restaurant safety training programs.
7. Monitor Food Safety And Product Recall Notices Effectively
If you have not already done so, consider assigning a specific kitchen staff member to liaison as your Internet checker for government food safety or product recall notices. Today many government consumer sites send email alerts to companies upon request about food safety and product recall decisions. Since these alerts happen with some frequency, it makes sense to have a person familiar with your kitchen menu and company inventory peruse these messages on a daily basis. You may avoid purchasing some supplies you cannot utilize. Preventing even a single avoidable outbreak of food borne illness significantly benefits restaurants.
8. Request Feedback From Customers
Asking customers to contribute ideas to improve restaurant safety may help alert management to potential concerns before problems arise. You'll want to learn about these types of issue as soon as possible so you can correct any unsafe conditions immediately. Restaurant safety training programs should encourage employees to notify managers about comments they receive from customers concerning unsafe conditions.
9. Review Business Insurance Policies Periodically With Safety Issues in Mind
Finally, you may find it helpful to look over your firm's business insurance policies at regular intervals. If you add additional assets to your company, such as a food truck or a delivery service, it may become necessary to expand or change some coverage provisions. Most insurance agents will happily assist customers in conducting periodic policy reviews with restaurant safety issues in mind. These meetings may offer valuable help to companies undergoing rapid business expansion. If you've significantly improved safety recently, you might discover cost-saving benefits.
Restaurant Safety Matters to Everyone
Maintaining a safe workplace holds numerous advantages. No one can possibly foresee every possible accident. Yet alert restaurant owners can take many steps to promote safety!
