Building a Healthier, Safer Workplace

Food safety excellence should be a continuous goal for your restaurant, especially in 2020 as pressure is on to keep a clean, safely run kitchen. As food trends and menus change, restaurants must consider updating to the latest and safest equipment, choosing sustainable ingredients and adopting the latest safety practices.

The first step in building a healthier, safer workplace is to make measurable goals. Begin by evaluating your processes. What is working and what is not working? What are you being audited for? What is the health department citing you for? Is food safety being prioritised by all staff members? Is food safety improving, or is it declining? What are your high-risk food safety issues and are you taking the necessary steps to fix them? Now, make a list of important food safety goals. The goals should drive your organisation toward impactful change with food safety as the top priority.

Next, you want to determine how you will measure your food safety goals. To do this, it helps to focus on the data. Maybe you want to decrease food waste costs by a specific percentage. Put a timeline on your goals; it will make them easier to follow.

In order to ensure success with your new safety goals, enable staff members to take appropriate steps to achieve goals. You will not see improvement if they are not implementing your practices. New goals need to be clearly communicated, understood and reinforced. Announce the new goals in a staff meeting and encourage full staff participation.

Two of NCCO International’s products that can help make these goals easier to track and implement are the DateIt™ Food Rotation Labelling system and the DateCodeGenie®. These two products make it easy to track when food was prepped and when, as well as automate labelling processes and save your organisation time and money.

Continue collecting data on a month-by-month basis to ensure you accomplish your safety goals. Cheers to 2020!

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