Bright Green March 2017 Newsletter: The Future of Food Safety

According to CDC estimates, food borne illness is responsible for 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3000 deaths each year.  Impact on the US economy is estimated at $75 billion. (President’s FY 2017 Budget Request: Key Investments for Implementing the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), Feb 22, 2016)

Five of the seven rules of the Food Safety Modernization Act have become rules and $104 million has been approved as a budget to implement the new changes.  What all of this means in plain English is the scrutiny under which we operate in the food service industry is going to continue to increase.  Much of the new legislation is going to focus on produce, especially imported produce. To the credit of the FDA, they proposed major changes in 2013 which they significantly re-wrote after visits to farms and food service companies.  

Sabra hummus is the latest in a long line of well-known companies with food safety recalls.  Blue Bell ice cream has recently had two listeria-related recalls. Chipotle restaurants, once a darling of the industry, continues to struggle with the fallout in consumer trust from a string of food borne illnesses.  

PRODUCE
Although the 2009 food code was adopted by the state of Florida in 2013, enforcement of the code at the inspector level has been slow and often parts of the code are not enforced at all.  I have it on rather good authority that the FDA will issue a new food code in 2017, produce handling will be at the center of those changes.   
In the coming years, you will almost certainly see a push in two areas with respect to produce.
1) Separation of raw/unwashed produce from ready-to-eat produce.  These provisions are already in the code and I have seen them enforced sporadically but you can be sure inspectors will soon be checking. With all the recent focus on imported produce and increased sampling of produce by the FDA you can be sure changes are in the wind.
2) Produce wash: Another near-certainty in coming years will be the mandatory use of a chemical wash on produce either at the distributor level or at the store level.  These chemicals have been on the market for decades but are not widely used.  Look for a push for this as the FDA wraps up their produce sampling program and implements the FSMA.  If you google "food safety updates" the first several pages are nearly all produce related.

  
MONEY SAVING TIP - AIR BALANCE
Air balance is an often overlooked "easy money" solution.  If you have a monthly HVAC maintenance plan, your maintenance company should be checking this each time they visit.  Like all maintenance companies, they will "respect what you inspect."  Most do a poor job.  
Nearly all food service facilities have "make up air." Make up air is designed to bring air back into the building to replace the air taken out by your hoods. Testing your air balance is easy.  If you open one of the doors and get a huge rush of air in either direction, your air balance is off.  Stand at your front door with a paper napkin, crack the door slightly and see what the napkin does, it will move slightly.  If it moves a lot in one direction or another, you have an air balance problem. If the napkin flutters inward, you have negative pressure and each time you open the door the outside air comes rushing in.  During the Florida summer, the last thing you need is to bring 95° humid air into your building.  
Conversely, if you have positive pressure (the napkin flutters outward) then you push your air conditioning out the door into the world or your heat in the winter. Bottom line, air balance is easy to check and easy to fix, just make sure you are holding your vendors accountable.  How much can you save each month? More than enough to pay for Bright Green Q.A.     

PEOPLE
Ask any restaurateur his/her biggest challenge, it's people.  Generational changes in work ethic, minimum wage hikes, payroll tax hikes, ACA compliance costs, and a decrease in the number of people willing to work in our industry have all contributed to a serious shortage of employees, particularly engaged, caring employees.  
To a person, our brains crave education, challenges, and stimulation.  We want to learn.  My younger staff members used to marvel at the amount of useless information in my head.  In a game of trivia, they have no chance against me. The reason for this is simple: The era in which I was educated required it. There were no handheld devices where anything and everything could be researched in a matter of seconds.  The younger generation has no need to memorize facts, figures, and people, they have instant access to nearly every expert on the planet.
The best way to have employees is to keep the ones you already have, how do you do that?
Education.
Make sure they learn, teach them new things, make them into experts.  Become more than a J-O-B.  Our number one goal at Bright Green Q.A. is better results through education.    

YELP  

Local communities now have the option of adding health inspections to your YELP page.  Many, but not all restaurants' inspections are posted on the home page next to the menu.  This continues the trend of health and sanitation being front and center, this trend will only intensify in the coming years as information becomes more easily available.  The last thing you want to see when someone visits your YELP page is "Fail."  
Now more than ever, your guests have the ability to see "behind the curtain" to what is really going on in your kitchen.  Those businesses that do consistently great work will have a tremendous competitive advantage over those who do not.    

Bright Green Monthly Newsletter: April 2017 FAQs from the Road

Frequently asked questions, nuances, and clarifications from my inspections

Make HAACP easy with a thermocouple.

HAACP plans are among the most well-intended and most poorly executed tools in the restaurant industry.  Most managers are men and women of action, most of them do not like paperwork, and most of them get too busy to execute a daily log.  Enter the thermocouple.  The thermocouple is a programmable thermometer, easily used and understood by your staff members.  You simply program the items you want to temp on a regular basis.  The employee simply selects the item from a menu, sticks the thermometer and the thermocouple logs the temp and time for you.  There you have a down loadable record of your temperatures.  Like any system, it still needs to be managed, but it eliminates the need to keep paper records and is much more easily executed by your staff.  

What closes restaurants?  Bugs and rodents close restaurants.
Every Tuesday, the DBPR posts a list of restaurants closed by the health department.  A well-publicized closure will result in a 10-25% drop in sales immediately.  News travels fast, bad news travels at light speed.  There are no greater expenses in our industry than empty seats and a loss of consumer confidence.  Being in Florida and working in a building where the doors open and close several hundred times per day, it is entirely possible for bugs to enter your building, indeed the cleanest of operations will see an occasional bug.  Whether they visit or become residents is up to the operator.  The BIGGEST factor in bug and rodent activity is the condition of the facility.  I know you are saying, "Thank you Captain Bright Green Obvious," but as all of you know, identifying and fixing a problem are a gulf apart.  
Having a monthly expert pest management company is crucially important, but there are several low and no cost solutions to these problems.  Like all living things, pests need food, water, and a safe place to shelter their young.  If you deny them these things, they will make their shelter somewhere other than your business. 

1) Dry the floors:  Standing water is the number one culprit for all creatures great and small. Other than air, water is the most essential and urgent of all conditions to sustain life.  Giant human populations build up around water.  If that water is in the corner behind your dish machine, thirsty critters will seek it out.  Now, everyone who has been in the business longer than 6 months knows every restaurant ever built puts floor drains at the highest spot on the floor rather than the lowest, so keeping water off the floor in the first place is crucial.  Check to see that all of your plumbing, especially in the dish area, is draining properly, use floor fans to dry at night after your staff has cleaned up.    

2) Eliminate as much cardboard as possible.  You may run the cleanest operation in the world but your distributors may not. Cardboard boxes with supplies often sit for months before they are sent to your store.  Roaches multiply very quickly and often out of site.  Like icebergs, if you see one, there is much more below the surface.  Don't let them in. 

3) Keep food off the floor.  1/2 of a shrimp will feed a roach for a lifetime, rats have a sense of smell more sensitive than most dogs.  Keep food off the floor and makes sure floors are clean to deny these pests an easy livelihood, you work hard for your food and drink, make sure they do the same, outdoors!  Check under your counters, behind equipment.  Move and clean behind equipment regularly.  A dish person two hours per week is usually enough to get all of the areas clean.  

4) Patch holes immediately.  A hole is a home to bugs and rodents, when they pop up, seal them right away.  

5) Don't prop your doors open. 

You can never completely eliminate the possibility of pests, but these simple steps can help keep them manageable.   

MAKE YOUR VENDORS PAY
As a QA vendor, I often see the results of half-assed work from other vendors, particularly in refrigeration, HVAC and dish washing equipment.  When encountering an equipment problem leading to a health code violation, the most common explanation is, "That was just fixed yesterday."  
Vendors, like staff members, have to be managed and held accountable.  When dealing with vendors, operators who are not owners sometimes forget the identity of the boss.  The boss is easy to determine, it's the one who writes the check.  If your boss writes the check and he has put you in charge, then you are the boss.  
When a vendor visits, follow these steps to get a satisfactory outcome:

1) Make your vendor explain the problem in depth. I know you are busy, but listen, your attention at this point can save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars.  When I visit my clients, I not only identify issues, I have answers to solve the issues.  The quality of my answers determines the value of my service.  

2) You pay your vendors to fix your equipment, not rig it.  Do not accept anything less than repair.  I spoke to a client yesterday who told me the last three visits from his repair man involved spraying the item with WD40.  I can rig a cord, spray WD40, attach duct tape, or perform any "jury rigged" repair.  Vendors charge big money for their services, you deserve better than duct tape.

3) Use small businesses whenever possible.  Admittedly this is a biased opinion as I am a small businessman.  A salaried employee at a big company gets a check regardless of your business.  Say what you want, it's not the same as being directly paid by your customer.  The small businessman eats, sleeps, and breathes based on your business.  Find someone who shares this level of urgency about doing things right, that is often the owner. Big companies have great information, resources, and experts, the owner has a direct financial interest in your satisfaction.  

4) Make the vendor look at the entire piece of equipment.  Modern machinery is complicated with use of computers and sometimes redundant, interdependent systems.  HVAC units have high-limit switches to prevent more expensive parts of the unit from being damaged. If something goes wrong, the high limit switch will burn out to protect the rest of the unit from damage.  Now, a vendor who simply replaces a high limit switch is not doing his job.  It is his job to replace the switch AND determine the cause.  The vendor is only too happy to charge you for another trip when that fix fails a week later.  If you pay for a monthly maintenance contract on your refrigeration, all of the units should be examined thoroughly and potential problems fixed or identified.  If your vendor only comes in and changes filters, find a new vendor.    

5) Put it in writing.  Make your vendors record everything IN WRITING, this allows you to go back and hold them accountable for past visits and help you cut down on costly repeat visits.   

Bright Green Monthly Newsletter: September 2016 FAQs from the road

Frequently asked questions, nuances, and clarifications from my inspections

* Expertise is an ongoing journey and a mind set rather than a destination.  These answers and clarifications are based upon my many conversations with clients and state inspectors.  As with all rules and regulations, there is some room for individual interpretation.  Thanks to Gary and Ed at the Orange County Department of Health for their assistance.

HOW FAR MUST CHEMICALS BE FROM FOOD?

Common sense dictates chemicals and food must be separate, but what about sealed chemicals and sealed foods?  I ran into a situation this month where an inspector had cited a client for having an unopened bottle of chemicals next to an unopened bottle of vinegar, on the same shelf, both were clearly labeled, yet this was cited as a high priority violation.  

Following up with the DBPR, the rule is "completely separate," one of those "subject to interpretation" types of rules.  These same rules apply to sanitizer.  Make sure sanitizer buckets are not stored on a shelf near food, even food in closed containers.  Many inspectors will not cite this as a violation but some will.  Where ever you put sanitizer, make sure it is at least 6 inches above the floor.  

I HAVE A BACK FLOW PREVENTER ON MY FAUCET WITH A SPLITTER, WHY IS THE INSPECTOR TELLING ME I NEED ONE ON EACH SIDE?
After a bit of research, I have gotten a straight answer to this question. Most of you have a faucet in your mop sink like this one:

This faucet clearly has a vacuum breaker "bell" on it.  Once you add a splitter with two hoses, you double the potential amount of water that can be siphoned into the public supply and the pressure no longer works with the bell.  This faucet is designed to handle only one attachment. It is important to note, the back flow preventers must be attached after the split, not before. You can get a vacuum breaker at Lowe's or Home Depot for about $6, so spend $12 and take this issue off the table.  If 1/2 of your split is used to supply water to chemicals, the chemical dispenser may or may not have a back flow preventer on it.   

CLARIFICATION ON BIG 5 FOODBORNE ILLNESS REQUIREMENTS. 
Last month I wrote in my newsletter that inspectors are starting to ask hourly staff members about the Big 5 Foodborne illnesses and the Big 8 allergens.  Certified professional food managers are expected to have these memorized but it is different for hourly staff members. An inspector will ask one of your staff members randomly about the Big 5.  The hourly staff member only needs to be able to show the inspector where the information is located.  I send all of my clients this information. Post it on a board, let you staff know where to find this info and you are covered with the inspector.  

UNWASHED PRODUCE
As with all of us, inspectors develop a routine and pet peeves.  The health code changes rapidly as events develop.  For example, ten years ago, the Norovirus was relatively unknown.  A couple of big time outbreaks on cruise ships made it more commonly known and it is now one of the Big 5. It usually takes inspectors a while to "catch up" to the changes, they are busy, they deal with staff turnover, and like us, their level of urgency is often determined by the supervisor's hot button issues.  One of the standards adopted in 2013 by Florida that has been inconsistently enforced is the policy regarding separation of unwashed produce from ready-to-eat food.  A common high priority violation is a service staff member failing to wash "skin-on" fruits prior to cutting them or prepping them.  Lemons, limes and oranges cut by the front of house staff are common mistakes.  
Unwashed produce, fruits or vegetables cannot be stored above "Ready to Eat" So if you have bagged lettuce, cut lettuce, diced tomatoes, or any other ready to eat product it must be stored above or away from unwashed produce.  This is a high priority violation, treated the same as raw chicken over lettuce (I know all of you cringe when I say this because it has been drilled into your heads since day one in the business, make your staff see it the same way).

EGGS
There has been a lot of confusion about the proper storage of raw eggs.  Eggs are a bit odd because shelled eggs can actually be held as high as 45°.  I've seen inspectors treat eggs as poultry, that is, always on the bottom shelf.  The food code distinguishes raw shelled eggs from poultry in one important way, they need to be on bottom shelf, but cannot be underneath raw meat as raw chicken can be.  So when you store eggs, the best solution is to store them on a bottom shelf with items like cheese or milk above them.  That way, you cover all the bases with various interpretations.  Hard boiled eggs are treated like Ready to Eat food.  Any other version other than raw eggs in the shell must be held at 41° or less.

COOLER CARE & MAINTAINING TEMPERATURE
Refrigeration is a massive expense for restaurants, both in the prices of the equipment and the prices of the repair service, here are a few tips to follow to troubleshoot, maintain, and manage this high dollar equipment.
1) Check the plug.  Don't laugh, I bet all of you have called out a repair tech only to discover the cooler was not plugged in.  Always check the plug.
2) Check the breaker, sometimes in Florida we get lightning, power surges can pop a breaker and kill your refrigeration.
3) Clean the coils.  The coils on your coolers "breathe" 24/7 much like we do.  When our lungs inhale too much dirt, dust, grease, we cough or sneeze to get rid of it.  Since coolers don't, their coil lungs need to be cleaned manually.  A long soft bristle brush and some soapy water will do the trick.  Be careful not to bend the "fins" on the coils, they bend about as easily as aluminum foil.  
4) Make sure fans are not obstructed.  If your cooler has exposed fans like many drawer coolers do, it is possible a piece of film from a pan has come off and wrapped around one of the cooler fans, check this before you make that costly phone call. Also check for film in front of coils or maybe even a cleaning cloth. Anything obstructing the flow of air in the coolers will dramatically effect your temperatures.    
5) Product levels.  Especially for food in cooler tops, make sure to keep the level of product below the line in the pans, plastic pans will have a line, metal pans will be dimpled at the fill level.  Keep the tops closed as much as possible, especially in the middle of the day, when it is hot outside and all your hot equipment is on.  Cooler tops are like regular ice coolers, they cool very well when an item is "submerged" in the ice, not so well on top of the ice.  In closed coolers, the air circulation keeps product much colder just like a windy cold day feels much colder than a windless cold day. Product has to be submerged in the cooler top to keep temp.
6) Don't insulate product from the cold.  Portion controls like souffle cups, squeeze bottles, double inserts and the like create additional layers of air, metal or plastic between the product and the cold.  If you have cheese in a souffle cup with a lid inside a pan, there are four layers of insulation between the cold and the product, air in the cup, the plastic of the cup, air in the pan and the material of the pan.  Since there is no circulation, the product often never gets cold. In addition, portioning is usually done for the shift and the portions often go directly into the cooler top or pan before they can cool.  My tips.  For squeeze bottles, put ice inside the pan in which they are stored so the product is directly in contact with cold.  For portion cups and souffles, put them on a sheet tray after you potion them, uncovered in the walk in until they are below 41°, then cover and store in the bottom of your line coolers. Put them up top a couple at a time as needed.
7) Line coolers are designed to hold temperature, not to lower it.  Walk-ins, freezers and ice baths are for cooling.  Any time an item is being prepped, portioned or worked with at room temperature, please put it back into the walk in, freezer or ice bath until it is down to temp. Many items out of temp on the line were never properly cooled in the first place. Anytime an item is heated and then cooled, it must be separated into smaller batches to be cooled properly.  You have 2 hours to get the product below 70° and 4 hours after than to get the product to 41°.   
8) Periodically check defrost timers. Defrost timers on coolers do not usually have a battery back up. If you lose power, your circuit breaker pops, or you unplug your coolers when you move them to clean, your defrost timers become less and less close to the actual time. Unplugging your coolers for just 5 minutes to clean each night will result in the timer being off more than an hour after just two weeks.  Murphy's law says your coolers will go into defrost mode while they are uncovered in the middle of the day you have a health inspection.  If you have a monthly maintenance company, they should be checking this, but ask them about it. Like doctors, many techs will check only the obvious.  Each cooler is different and most manuals are available on the manufacturer's website.  If you do this in house, please make sure the person in charge has a working knowledge of refrigeration.  Often, timers are located inside coolers near fans and electricity.  
    
Follow these few tips before you call a repair service and to prevent temperature issues. Do this each time you encounter a temp problem and you will pay for my services many times over each year.  All of these solutions are low or no cost, only a re-engineering of existing processes. Find a key employee with career goals, show he/she what you want done, put that person in charge of driving these results.  Tell them part of the job is to educate co-workers.  As an operator, you have many conflicting demands on your time, turn a key member of your staff, or two, into bulldogs in this area.        

      

  

Bright Green Monthly Newsletter :August 2016 FAQs from the road

Frequently asked questions, nuances, and clarifications from my inspections

*Please note, these answers are strictly based only upon food safety and sanitation, not product quality, a microwaved ribeye is safe to eat but please don’t do it. 

 HOW ABOUT BUTTER AT ROOM TEMPERATURE?

          I have kept butter on my counter for well over 40 years and am still alive to tell the tales but what are the guidelines on butter? 

          This has been a hotly debated topic for many years in the food community.  Without going into the gory details, there are two major factors with butter, Aw (Which is water activity) and pH/acidity.  Butter is fermented during the pasteurization process, much like alcohol, the fermentation makes the butter more acidic, on top of this butter has a high fat content and a low water activity.  The FDA code says salted butter is a Non TCS food, does not need to be refrigerated.  Unsalted butter MAY be a TCS food.

          Here is where it gets funny.  Most butter held at room temperature on the line is used to brush, add to, or drizzle over food.  For instance, if you brush a steak with butter to finish, you are introducing small amounts of a TCS food (beef) into the butter when you return the brush, therefore making it a TCS food.  You could make an argument for butter in a squeeze bottle so long as it does not come into contact with TCS food.

          In my career, inspectors have been about 50/50 with temping butter, here is my recommendation. 

OPERATOR SOLUTION: The FDA food code allows for time as a public health control.  To review, nearly all products can be in the danger zone for four hours before becoming hazardous, any food can be time controlled for public health.  In order to hold a product as timed for public health, the item must be clearly labeled with the contents and the time which it must be discarded. Hold only a small amount of butter for a shift, tag it with a time four hours from when it is pulled, throw what is left away after four hours. Use a squeeze bottle to make sure there is no opportunity for cross contamination.

ICE CREAM AND ALLERGENS

          Had a rare and odd situation with a client this week.  One of their guests, a child with a nut allergy, had a reaction after eating vanilla ice cream.  The parents had an epi-pen and the child is ok after a visit to the ER, but how did this happen?

          Turns out the restaurant serves butter pecan ice cream, stored in the same ice cream freezer as the vanilla and somehow or another, the scoop was not cleaned and sanitized between uses or some of the butter pecan found its way into the vanilla. 

OPERATOR SOLUTION

Keep allergens separate from other foods. Store and pours are best for loose allergens like pecans and almonds. 1/9 pans in a cooler or on a counter are easy to mix with non-allergens.  For ice cream: 1) Keep a separate scoop for ice cream containing nuts. 2) Have a system in place for allergies, bright yellow ticket, manager involvement, etc. to be extra careful. The server should always broadcast an allergy and over-communicate.  3) In the case of ice cream, make sure other ice creams are covered.  4) This client uses an old-school ice cream parlor dipping scoop, the surface of the scoops has become worn down to the point where the water bath is no longer sufficient to wash away any allergens that might remain.  No one is sure exactly how this happened but these four steps will greatly decrease the opportunity for a mistake. 

CAN I KEEP BREWED ICED TEA MORE THAN A DAY?

          Brewed tea can actually be kept for seven days, according to the local chapter of the DBPR, it will have to be labeled and dated just like any other item held for more than 24 hours and refrigerated.  From a taste and quality standpoint, this may not be a good idea.

OPERATOR SOLUTION: Brew only what you need for the shift, store the small amount of left over tea labeled and dated overnight, use first early the following day.   

CAN AN EMPLOYEE WITH A CAST COVERING PART OF HIS/HER HAND SERVE FOOD?

          An employee with a cast can serve food so long as he/she wears as disposable sleeve or large glove over the cast during food service.

          The difficulty with this solution is the same rules apply as disposable gloves, they have to change the covering each time they bus a table or pick something up off the floor before going back to serve drinks or run food.

OPERATOR SOLUTION:  Return the injured employee to modified duty, exempt from food running, with a covering, maybe re-assign running side work so the employee does not have to change the covering as often and let other staff members run food until the employee is 100%.

QUAT SANITIZER TEMPERATURE

          Quat sanitizer must have a minimum temperature of 75°F, maddeningly 2° above your A/C set temperature.  I have yet to see an inspector actually check the temp of sanitizer but they can technically do that.  The temperature in your kitchen will not likely fall below 75° but in the dining room and behind the bar it could be an issue.       

OPERATOR SOLUTION:  Call the company who maintains your chemicals and make sure sanitizing equipment is designed to automatically blend hot and cold water, before it reaches the spigot, to a temperature around 100°F.  There is normally no charge for this service.  Most of the newer systems will already do this, but some of the older ones may not.  What you don’t want is the unwitting staff member adjusting the temp of your sanitizer and creating a high priority violation.  Change the sanitizer every 2-4 hours.

That’s it for August, if you find yourself with any questions or would like any clarifications, email is the best way to contact me scott.brightgreen@att.net or phone 407-314-6871.  I can respond to nearly all inquiries within 24 hours.         

Don't underestimate the cost of a poor health inspection

In my travels, I have run across a number of restaurants who really could use some outside help.  No matter how sharp and competent the operator, it is easy to miss things you see in your own business each day.  The first reflex when you ask a restaurateur to spend money is, "No."  Margins can be thin in this business and health inspections only take place two or three times per year. Inspections can be out of site out of mind until you are in the middle of one going south.  

I have seen a single business drop as much as $20-$30,000 per WEEK in sales from a publicized bad inspection.  Chipotle saw it's quarterly profits drop by $53 MILLION due to their food borne illness outbreak and that doesn't include the additional recovery and wage costs associated with fixing the problem.  No E. Coli was ever actually found at a Chipotle location.  

As I was looking for contact information on recently closed restaurants in Orlando on Google, in about 1/3 of the instances the entire page one of the Google search was related to the closure.  I had to go to page two and sometimes three just to find the phone number!  

Without mentioning any names, here are some comments (stop reading if you are squeamish):

"moist rodent droppings" 
"Upwards of 85 live roaches in the prep area"
"Live weevils in the flour bin"
"Sewage backing up into the prep area"
"Raw chicken dripping onto produce" 

Many of these reports find their way onto specialty news segments, featuring HD images of the front of the business.  Reputations can be rebuilt, but you can't un-ring a bell.  Better to avoid the situation in the first place.

Your managers are busy.  Busy looking after guests, busy placing orders, busy trying to solve inter-personal employee drama, busy trying to control food cost, busy trying to keep your Millenial staff interested in your business, busy trying to manage wages, in many cases cooking themselves to save a few dollars.  

What they need is consistent feedback and easy to follow solutions.  Consistent employee awareness is the key.  That is what we offer.

Give us a call at 407-314-6871 or visit our website www.brightgreenquality.com to schedule an initial inspection at no cost to you.  

   

    

Keep an Eye on Chemicals

Chemicals are a necessity in the restaurant industry.  Cleaning and sanitation are essential to running a safe, first class operation.  

Chemicals can be the bane of your existence on a routine health inspection. Most violations involving chemicals are high-priority violations, the ones that get you fined or worse, closed if repeated. 

Here are some common High Priority chemical violations:

• Quaternary sanitizing solution too high or too low
• Incorrect sanitizing solution on your dish machine
• Store bought pest control chemicals (ie Raid) in the restaurant
• Unlabeled chemicals
• Chemicals stored around food

Here are a few easy tips for an operator to get the "easy points" on the chemical portion of the inspection. 

• Most chemical manufacturers provide labels and MSDS sheets for their chemicals, keep a good supply of these on hand, they are free.
• Lock up empty, unlabeled spray bottles in the office.  Don't give your staff the opportunity to fill a bottle without a label.
• Make checking chemical dispensers and opening and closing checklist item for your managers.
• Keep any store bought or pest control chemicals locked in the office.  
• Don't forget to check the host stand and the bar.  Most operators do a good job keeping an eye on the kitchen chemicals and miss that unlabeled window cleaner at the host stand or that Bartender's Friend sitting over the ice well at the bar.  
• Chemicals and food don't mix, keep sanitizing buckets six inches above the floor and make sure you use the pre-marked ones or have a label affixed. Don't let your staff have chemicals other than sanitizer during the shift.
• Keep chemicals separate, on the bottom shelves, and bottles in designated areas.  
• Make sure your staff has a quarterly review of your inspections.  With all of the conflicting demands, it is very easy for these things to be out of sight, out of mind.

Make sure your staff is up to date on their Florida Food Handler cards, not only are they required by law, the class helps keep awareness high in your building. 

Bright Green offers these classes at a discount for our clients.  

Whether chemical safety, of food safety, there is no substitute for a well-trained staff.

Visit us at www.brightgreenquality.com, email, or call 407-314-6871 to schedule your initial inspection at no charge with a 12 month commitment.