Whether it’s going out for a quick lunch with your friends or booking an evening table at your favourite local restaurant, people love to base an occasion around eating food. However, dining out isn’t a risk-free affair, it can include the potential of picking up unwanted illnesses through multiple avenues, whether that’s poor hygiene or food poisoning. Whilst many cases may remain unreported, studies have estimated that there are around 2.4 million cases of foodborne illness occurring every year within the UK, with diseases stemming from over 11 different pathogens.
Germs which enter our food create foodborne illnesses that can easily form an outbreak when multiple people who were eating at the same location begin to suffer similar symptoms. With almost 90% of foodborne illnesses being the result of contamination from workers, it is evident that there are many things that restaurants can implement to better improve upon their hygiene levels. As such, we have prepared 6 tips for your restaurant facilities to consider when looking to create a safer environment for your customers and staff alike.
1) Create Hygiene Standards
By creating specific and understandable hygiene standards within your restaurant, you can ensure an understanding is developed and maintained regarding what you expect from your employees. This may encapsulate suitable work attire, following proper hand hygiene protocols, or even how your staff cover their hair or remove jewellery when handling food.
2) Educate Your Staff on Appropriate Hygiene Procedures
Many of us are aware of the importance of maintaining good levels of hand hygiene, with expectations understandably higher than ever. Properly washing your hands can aid in the reduction of cross-contamination amongst surfaces and within food. Educating your staff on how to properly and effectively wash their hands ensures your restaurant is maintaining good levels of hand hygiene whilst handling food.
3) Separate Your Equipment Based on Use
A simple yet effective way of maintaining basic hygiene within your restaurant is to allocate specific areas, utensils, and pieces of equipment to certain uses. For example, maintain separate chopping boards, knives, and prepping areas for your meat produce than you would use for vegetables etc will reduce any risk of cross-contamination.
4) Clean Up After Yourself
Just as you would in a desk-based office environment, you should maintain a clean and tidy working space, not just to remain efficient, but to ensure hygiene stays as a top priority. Sanitising your equipment and surfaces after each use can help reduce the potential of cross-contamination, an outbreak of food-borne illnesses and poor hygiene.
5) Prepare in Advance
Restaurants can become incredibly busy and hectic, and when your staff are in such a pressured and fast-paced environment, it can be easy for them to consider cutting corners on hygiene. By incorporating the preparation of certain foods into your restaurants schedule during less busy periods, you will be able to reduce the possibility of hygiene oversights.
6) Don’t Over-Extend Your Resources
Nobody likes to turn away customers, but providing your restaurants current diners with a clean, hygienic, and pleasant experience is likely to see them return. Consider limiting the number of tables within your facilities, or perhaps place a cap on your diner’s max stay. Doing so will provide you with the capacity to pay greater attention to the service, level of cleanliness, and hygiene you are providing to your paying customers.
Hygiene Fundamentals
With many customers and visitors entering your restaurant and interacting with frequently touched objects and surfaces, bacteria and other pathogens can spread and cross-contaminate. To combat this, commercial hand sanitiser stations should be implemented throughout your restaurant, focusing on entrances and exits to your premises and its washroom facilities.
Maintaining clean surfaces throughout your restaurant is crucial in creating a hygienic environment. You must clean and sanitise surfaces used when preparing food each time it is going to be used for a different kind of food. You should ensure your workforce always have easy access to the most appropriate commercial cleaning products suitable for the job at hand.
Explore Citron Shop’s wholesale commercial cleaning and surface sanitisers and discover products that you can rely on to create a hygienic restaurant experience for customers and employees alike.
Hygiene Extends Beyond the Kitchen
Your kitchen needs a large amount of care and attention when looking to create a clean and healthy environment, however your restaurants hygiene extends beyond your kitchen facilities. The state of your washrooms can be seen as a reflection of your kitchen, with unkempt conditions creating negative perceptions of the overall hygiene levels throughout your business. One study found that 66% of individuals will completely avoid a business when their washroom has a noticeable odour.
Clean washrooms are equally as important to customer retention as clean kitchens are for serving them safe food. Citron Shop’s range of wholesale commercial washroom hygiene products and cleaning supplies can ensure your restaurant is equipped with the correct products for effective cleaning of its washroom facilities, ensuring customers perceptions of your restaurant stay positive.
Explore Citron Hygiene’s Range of Commercial Restaurant Cleaning Supplies
Restaurant hygiene maintenance can be a difficult yet essential aspect to keeping your business operating at its safest and best.
To ensure you are always adequately stocked up and prepared with the correct tools for the job, discover Citron Shop’s range of commercial cleaning products and supplies, and our wholesale hygiene products including all you need to create a commercial hand sanitiser station.
For any further enquiries on how our products can meet your restaurants needs and requirements, get in touch with us today or call us.