Best Practice in a Restaurant

From Plans to Practice

You’ve now built the foundation of your Food Safety System — including your Food Safety Plan, Sanitation Plan, and Allergen Control Program.
In this next section, you’ll learn how to apply those plans in everyday restaurant operations: receiving, storing, preparing, and serving food safely and consistently. This is where your written plans come to life through daily habits, teamwork, and inspection-ready practices. To fight an enemy, you must first know him. Make sure that you and your staff are familiar with the list of common food allergies.

Never guarantee anything to your client!

Many food professionals think that people with allergies are fabulators – who confuse not liking a product with being allergic to it. This type of people exists, but it is a minority, and restaurant staff and owners must take responsibility for all the others who are confronted with the disease.

If the client reports a severe allergy, this is the first thing to say to him. A customer with a food allergy is expecting to receive accurate information so that he can make an informed choice.

For example, you are greeting a customer who is highly allergic to peanuts. Even if you do not use it in your kitchen, you must explain that other foods may have been contaminated by contact with your supplier, during delivery or only by an employee who eats peanuts he brought from home. Although it is forbidden to consume food while handling food, negligence may still occur.

Put a little prominently in sight near the cash register, at the reception and even on the menus with this warning:

All our products may contain or have been in contact with allergens.