Saturday, November 5, 2016

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.   

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