Good Food-Safety Practices to Go
Catering operations can clearly mean big bucks for restaurants, but off-site events also pose some unique food-safety challenges.
By Christine LaFave, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 7/1/2009
Catering operations can clearly mean big bucks for restaurants, but off-site events also pose some unique food-safety challenges. Transporting all manner of cold and hot items from the kitchen to the venue requires careful planning, timing and handling: Making sure that food arrives at the proper temperature is one thing; seeing that it stays outside the danger zone of 40F to 140F throughout service is another.
Berwyn, Ill.-based Buona Restaurants, with 11 locations in the Chicago suburbs, offers catering service for personal and private events of anywhere from 10 to 100-plus guests. Executive Chef Tony Scheri says that restaurant operators' first step in managing food safety within a catering business should be to realistically evaluate the type of events and menus they can and can't handle.
"We take our delivery and preparation procedures into consideration for every menu item we look to add," he says.
Buona relies on refrigerated trucks and vans to help keep salads and partially cooked items cool. "We use insulated bags for certain hot-menu items, which allows us to begin the cooking process in our commissary and complete it on site," Scheri says.
Staff training is crucial, too. In a casual, party atmosphere, and especially at outdoor events, it can be easy for workers to become lax about keeping hands, utensils and serving surfaces clean. Emphasizing that the event site needs to be treated as a kitchen with respect to food-safety management can help servers avoid cross-contamination. It can also be helpful to assign one employee the tasks of monitoring food temperatures frequently and keeping items covered.
Christine LaFave is associate editor of Chain Leader sister publication Restaurants & Institutions.
MORE FOOD-SAFETY PRACTICESGOVERNMENT: Food Safety Transparency, Dot Gov The White House Food Safety Working Group has launched a Web site, www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.com, to inform Americans of its progress. HOTELS: Dolce Hotels and Resorts Tackles H1N1 Flu RiskMontvale, N.J.-based Dolce Hotels and Resorts, which operates 24 upscale hotels, resorts and conference centers, underwent a three-phase program to help protect its guests and employees from the H1N1 flu virus. SUPERMARKETS: Consumers Trust Grocery Store Food, but Percentage Is SlippingAlthough the majority of Americans feel that foods in supermarkets are safe, the percentage who feel this way has decreased over the last five years, according to market research firm The NPD Group. |
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