Preparing or serving food is an important job and one that requires diligence when it comes to health and safety.
Unsafe or unhygienic food preparation and storage spaces could lead to serious issues and consequences for your business.
Serving food that contains allergens or isn’t stored correctly can also lead to serious consequences for your customers, which can also tarnish your reputation.
So, it’s crucial that every business involved with food in any way, whether it’s serving or preparing it, needs to work hard to ensure that it is always compliant with relevant health and safety regulations.
If you’re new to the food preparation market or are adapting your business to offer a new service to clients, then here is a handy guide to help you get started and understand what needs to be done to keep your customers and staff safe.
Food Temperatures
Different foods need to be stored at different temperatures, depending on whether they’ve been cooked or not. Also, if items have been stored frozen or in tins and then decanted out, they need to be stored in fridges at a set temperature. So, you need to make sure that you and your team understand the correct temperatures for each food and that your fridges, freezers and warming plates are set correctly.
Chemical Safety
Food preparation areas often require large amounts of industrial cleaning fluids, which need to be stored and handled correctly. If your staff don’t use the right solutions for the correct equipment or handle them without the proper protective equipment, then this could cause serious injury to your team. It could also potentially damage your valuable equipment, so it’s crucial that you invest in chemical safety training for your staff and assess the risks regularly. Use a free COSHH Risk Assessment Template from HS Direct to help you conduct regular risk assessments and ensure that your chemicals are always stored and handled safely.
Cleaning And Sanitisation
Cleaning and ensuring that every utensil is sanitised regularly, even if it is not often used, is a key component to ensuring safety and hygiene in your food business. So, you need to make sure that your team understands the cleaning procedures in your company and their personal responsibilities. Make sure that you have the right cleaning logs available and that you work with your staff to ensure that these are filled out correctly.
Allergens
If your business is preparing and serving food to customers, then you need to understand allergens and how your food preparation procedures could affect the safety of your diners. Learn about the most common allergens out thereand see how your food could be affected. While you can’t completely avoid contamination in an open food kitchen, by ensuring that you have the right best practices, you can reduce the risk of contamination.
Health and safety is a key part of running a food business, so it’s crucial that you work hard to understand the rules and work to put in best practices. These tips should help you to start your research and learn about the basics of food hygiene and safety.
