Designing a Food-Safe Kitchen
By Amelia Levin, Sr. Associate Editor -- Foodservice Equipment and Supplies, 3/1/2008
It's not enough to have the proper equipment and supplies to create a food-safe environment. Operators need to place these items so staff can easily maintain the highest levels of food safety and productivity.
What does it mean to design a "food-safe" kitchen? Adhering to HACCP plans and health department laws and codes plays an integral role in maintaining a food-safe environment. But before a facility can get to that stage, the foodservice operator needs to give staff the tools to succeed, and taking the first steps toward creating and maintaining a food-safe environment starts with the kitchen's design.
Just as important as including food safety resources, a good kitchen design should also make using these tools easy, according to Mark Godward, president of Miami-based Strategic Restaurant Engineering, a WD Partners Co. If I'm a manager, Godward adds, "and I want my employees to do good work, but don't give them the resources to do it, it's going to be very difficult for them. They may be motivated individuals, but when push comes to shove at some point in time, it's going to hurt them, and their performance will suffer."
Take hand sinks, for example. So many restaurants and other foodservice operators have figured out the importance of reminding their employees to wash their hands, through verbal cues, scheduled handwashing breaks, and signs posted throughout the facility. But if the company does not back up these reminders by incorporating multiple, easily accessible hand sinks throughout the facility, how can it expect employees to continually take these food safety steps?
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"Food safety needs to be an investment, but it doesn't have to be expensive. If your kitchen is designed right, it'll be more efficient and cost-effective, and you'll get a return on your investment." -Mark Godward |
"The manager might tell staff, we need you to clean your hands every half an hour or every time you touch raw product, but what if the hand sink is too far away, or it's behind a wall, and it's not visible?" Godward says. "What if the paper towels or the soap are out? Maybe, they'll just get a cloth and wipe their hands and that's all they'll do." Sadly, Godward notes, he's seen this happen in foodservice establishments more times than he'd like to admit.
"It's wrong because if the employee was really intent on washing their hands, but couldn't for these reasons, management is sending a message that they're not serious about handwashing and food safety," Godward says. "If they're serious, they will have someone replenishing paper towels and soap at the sink, and making sure the sinks are fully functional 100 percent of the time. Foodservice operators really need to be as obsessed about food safety as they are about having perfect food. In some cases, it should be a higher 'obsession.'"
If it's not, the ramifications are pretty simple: Suffer from just one foodborne illness outbreak, and that's enough to set the operation back not only financially, and reputation-wise, but morally, too. Each year, foodborne illness results in 76 million people getting sick, 300,000 requiring hospitalization, and 5,000 deaths, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control. Those statistics alone should be enough to make operators tighten up their bootstraps when it comes to food safety. Because as everyone knows: A bad reputation equals no customers.
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"If you buy a power-soaker or a dishwasher, it may cost more up front than a three-compartment sink, but you'll have cleaner, better sanitized items." -Mark Godward |
"Food safety needs to be an investment," Godward says. "But it doesn't have to be expensive. If your kitchen is designed right, it'll be more efficient and costeffective, and you'll get a return on your investment, like buying insurance."
A food-safe kitchen also helps operators save on labor costs,Godward says. "If you buy a power-soaker or a dishwasher, it may cost more up front than a three-compartment sink, but you'll have cleaner, better sanitized items." Plus, Godward says, you won't need to worry about staff having to manually clean items. The labor saving there is simply money in the bank.
The key to a food-safe kitchen design then, according to Godward, is to review all the food safety processes that would occur in the kitchen, similar to critical control points in a HACCP design, and think to continually ask the question: "Is it reasonable that the staff will perform good food-safe habits consistently?" The next step is justifying the expenses for securing this type of layout.
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Design School Tip #1
Safe Food Flow "From receiving to storage and dishwasher path, it's important to maintain a separation of cleaned and soiled dishes and utensils," Norman says. "For example, you don't want garbage or contaminated dishes going down the same hallway as the prepared foods that are about to go out to the customer." In addition, Norman uses wall separations to partition the dishroom from the food prep areas, and makes sure entry/exit points differ for each. |
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Design School Tip #2
Proper Storage Way too often, operators do not equip their facilities to sufficiently handle random and, in some cases, large deliveries when these shipments arrive at the receiving area. "A lot of times this issue is a much ignored one," Godward says. "It goes back to the resource issue. Often when deliveries come, employees are in the middle of something else and can't organize the products in the cooler right way. Cases of food may sit outside the coolers in the kitchen for too long periods of time. In an ideal situation, you have enough room in the cooler so the employee can place the bulk product in there immediately, and come back later to organize it." An important food safety rule is to arrange items in a first-in, first-out manner so products are used before they expire. Godward uses the word "ideal" here to note again the concern about budget, and the importance of making food safety a financial priority. "The battle for reducing capital investment is a very valuable one, and one that everyone in the foodservice industry is involved in," he says. "But you need to make sure you have enough of what you need in order to support staff. Walk-in coolers should be large enough to accommodate rapid deliveries." On top of that, using multiple, separate coolers for raw and prepared food product is also an ideal food safety approach, one that's easier said than done in some instances. "It's not always possible to have additional walk-in coolers, but at a minimum, you need to clearly isolate the raw products from those that have already been cooked," Godward says. And, if space really, really is an issue, according to Norman, proper scheduling can help managers ensure food doesn't sit out after deliveries. "Operators can stagger their deliveries and production processes accordingly," he says. "For example, you might not have space to bring in three or four deliveries at a time. You really need to get your timing down so when raw product comes in, there's space to store it." |
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Design School Tip #3
Making Sustainability Safe
"Anyone who tells me they're going to use more locally grown foods, that dictates the need for a larger footprint and/or separate workstations," Norman says. "Going this route really is a step back in time. So much in the last 10 years has gone away from locally grown food product from small farmers to calling broadliners for pre-cut, mass-produced vegetables." Fresh product from "Farmer Joe," as Norman puts it, typically doesn't arrive pre-cut and prewashed. "You need to do your own preparation, so you need more prep space, disposers, sinks and other pieces of equipment to accommodate that. Anybody considering sustainability really has to consider that it's going to change the mode of their operation in many ways. A number of chains and operators are locked into their systems right now and not equipped to do a lot of their own prep work, which adds food safety risks to their operation." Of course, Norman's not saying that incorporating sustainability into menus is a bad idea, it's just something that definitely affects backof- the-house operations. Using more locally grown product represents another situation when operators need to have the timing of their deliveries down. Whereas broadliners generally deliver food in consistently sized packages, "Farmer Joe might bring tomatoes in cardboard boxes that are way bigger than would otherwise fit in your cooler as you had planned," Norman says. Or, he says, the tomatoes may be in plastic bags so operators need to find out a way to arrange those in storage properly. "If I'm ordering 30 pounds of tomatoes, and the farmer comes in with 60, and I want to buy them all, I have to be able to handle the storage of those products," Norman says. "It's the non-standardization of locally grown products that operators really need to consider. |
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Design School Tip #4
Properly Equipped Workstations In addition, Norman says, it's also not favorable for staff to cut raw chicken, then switch over and cut raw fish without cleaning and sanitizing the workstation in between. But another extremely important facet of designing a food-safe kitchen is making sure each workstation, including prep and cooking, comes equipped with the proper storage that keeps the product at safe temperatures.
"You need to have enough refrigeration at the point of use in order to keep product cold while it's being used," Godward says. "A staff member cutting chicken might bring out five portions to prep at a time, and if it sits out for 15 minutes that's OK. But if the product sits out for an hour or longer, then there's a problem." Undercounter refrigeration or close-by reach-ins help properly store the product in line for preparation. Once again, Godward has revisited the resource issue. If the operator chooses not to equip workstations with the proper storage and holding capabilities, particularly in a high-volume production kitchen, they have to consider the possibility that staff might need to make multiple trips. "If you're going to set up the rule for employees that they need to only take out the portion they need at one time, then you need to make it easy for the staff to execute that," Godward says. A similar case applies to cooking equipment. "If you install too small of a fryer for your operation, it might not heat up quick enough and then you create a situation where the staff member is tired of waiting for the product to fully cook and may not verify temperatures because they're rushing to get plates out. Then you have food that's undercooked," Godward says. "You need to design the workstations that make it easier to execute safe food." In addition to proper cooking equipment, operators need to ensure they cool their food appropriately. Ice baths may not be adequate enough for a particular operator's volume. Perhaps a cook-chill system is more appropriate. Either way, Godward says, this is an extremely important consideration when designing a kitchen to ensure good food safety practices. And, in terms of reheating and holding foods, Godward says, it's important to include proper reheating equipment that will get food really hot, "so staff members are not tempted to set up the line with cold food and hope after half an hour that they heat up to temp." |
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Design School Tip #5
Cleanability Discardable food prep dishware is also ideal for ensuring a food-safe kitchen. Equipment with smooth surfaces, stainless steel and, in some cases, antimicrobial treatments also helps. And, in terms of walk-in cooler shelving, Godward says, "I like those shelves that you can actually take off the walls and wash them down outside of the storage unit. Otherwise with the shelving all set up in a walk-in cooler, it's difficult for staff to get into all the places to clean." |
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Design School Tip #6
Safe Front-of-House Service
In other words, you have more hands potentially touching the customers' food and, shiver, hands that just touched dirty dishes on the last run. "You don't want to ask too much of your servers because when it's busy, they might not have time to wash their hands in between dropping dirty dishes off and running food, too. "It would be ideal to have a hand sink in the dishroom where servers drop plates off," Godward says But then again, he's seen too many hand sinks in this situation with empty soap dispensers, plates piled up on the sink, not enough paper towels. Operators need to think through these details and managers need to reinforce them. There's a common theme when it comes to designing a food-safe kitchen - it's one thing to have good food safety training practices, and a solid HACCP plan. But it's just as important to have a kitchen with the proper design and proper equipment that support this food safety plan, and even more importantly, give staff the tools to maintain the proper hygiene and execute safe food for the customer. |
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