Food Safety: The Extra Mile

Chick-fil-A builds kitchens, processes and standards to keep its customers safe from foodborne illness and from each other’s germs.

By Mary Boltz Chapman, Editor-in-Chief -- Chain Leader, 6/1/2007

If Dr. Hal King, manager of food and product safety at Chick-fil-A, could have one wish, it would be for customers to understand what goes into serving their food.

“We could have the chicken pre-breaded at the manufacturer, processed and par-fried, and then all we would have to do is bring it in the restaurant frozen—obviously a frozen state is a whole lot less risk—and just drop it in the oil and cook it,” says King. “But we feel like the best product, and what makes the Chick-fil-A product so valuable to the customer, is the way we’re doing it. It would be very hard for us to let food-safety risk supersede it. We would just say, find a way to make sure it doesn’t. We’re going to make sure we can provide the customer fresh chicken.”

This from a man whose resume includes investigating epidemics at the Centers for Disease Control, teaching and studying emerging African diseases at Emory University, and consulting with the U.S. military on infectious diseases. Such vast experience has come in handy for King. Since joining Chick-fil-A in April 2004, King has continued to implement food-safety initiatives that work together to protect customers against foodborne illness.

Safer Systems

Chick-fil-A’s sandwiches, nuggets and other chicken items use fresh product delivered daily to the stores. It is blast-frozen to protect it from organism growth, then thawed, filleted, breaded and cooked in the stores.

"When you’re talking about delivering chicken on trucks all around the country, there’s always the potential for a truck to go down or the opening and closing of the doors to change the temperature in the truck," King says. "So we just feel more comfortable with blast-freezing it before it leaves the poultry supplier."

The challenge comes at the store level. King says thorough training helps keep raw product away from prepared food. But more importantly, kitchens are designed to keep chicken prep separate. Frozen chicken enters the freezer in the back of the restaurant. It moves from there to the thawing cabinet, to the filleting and breading table, toward the cooking process, and finally to the finishing and packaging.

"There is a lower risk of having someone working with raw chicken in the same area where they might be making salads," King says. "Their focus is on the food, but you build into the system the process that restricts them without them even thinking about it."

Hands Down

King is working on a new program in the 175 units in Georgia using yellow gloves as a means to identify those who are handling raw chicken. He calls it a cultural change. "Most people who work with gloves think that the gloves are there to protect their hands from getting dirty from the chicken or greasy from the food," he explains. "We found it to be very effective to teach them, when I’ve got yellow gloves on, my gloves are dirty."

The gloves also enable managers to spot an employee in the wrong space or touching the wrong surface. The manager can then take corrective action. King says their reaction has been positive, and that managers and operators appreciate anything that helps them build confidence in their business.

Chick-fil-A is testing the gloves now with plans to roll them out to the rest of the chain over the next year.

Diner to Diner

A safety method meant to drive confidence with customers, especially parents, is Chick-fil-A’s January rollout of sanitized hand wipes and table mats.

The company researched which form of sanitizers worked best. It decided that parents liked wipes over liquid because they actually wipe off dirt, and Chick-fil-A can co-brand on the wipe wrapping, too. Parents appreciate the reminder to clean up before eating, especially for those whose kids have been in the play area, according to King.

The Table Toppers adhere to the surface, enabling young children to eat right off the table. The mats feature educational games that moms and dads can play with their kids, as well as information about Kid’s Meal items. Again, King says parents appreciate the sanitary surface, which he equates to a clean plate on a clean table. "And we get the benefit of reduced risk," he says, adding that the risk of illness is not just from the kitchen but also from the high-volume use of the tables and other customers.

Culture Based

Regardless of the kitchen flow, special gloves and other ways to protect customers, King says the foundation is culture and leading by example. "We have incredible depth of documentation," he explains. "We have a foundation of task sheets for everything that is done in a Chick-fil-A restaurant. That builds to our team member-development process that includes hard-copy stuff they have to read, watch DVDs, then take a certification exam. That gives them the foundation of this is what we expect.

"But we have the oversight of an operator who we spend a great deal of time selecting, and that operator takes a great deal of time selecting team members," King adds. "So buy-in comes from watching the managers and the operators doing the right thing."