Heat, noise and tension. Anyone who has ever worked in a professional kitchen knows about this. You carry out the same hand motions over and over: chopping, washing or shredding vegetables, handling sharp knives and heavy pots. And all of this usually while standing, under extreme time pressure and in a confined space. Falls, burns and cuts, but also ailments of the musculoskeletal system, are among the greatest risks in professional kitchens.
All things that you as a restaurateur and/or chef can do without, especially in times of skilled worker shortages. It therefore comes as no surprise that there is a legitimate interest in all occupational health and safety options and measures to achieve greater occupational safety in the gastronomy industry.
To the overview – measures for greater occupational safety in the gastronomy industry
Potential sources of danger in professional kitchens
This includes obvious risks that do not only apply to professional kitchens, such as heat, sharp objects or slippery floors. To reduce the risk of injury, it is essential to identify the most common sources of danger and take appropriate measures.
Image: Rational
Sharp knives and cutting tools
Sharp tools and knives are definitely indispensable in the kitchen. However, they are also the most common cause of cuts. Possible preventive measures include:
- Using non-slip cutting pads to ensure stability.
- Do not leave knives or other sharp objects in the sink.
- Train your employees in the correct cutting technique to prevent injuries.
- Store such dangerous items appropriately and safely.
Heat and hot surfaces
You know you need heat when cooking. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that professional kitchen equipment such as ovens, grills, deep-fat fryers or professional tilting fryers work at high temperatures and that kitchen staff come into contact with them. However, this also means a potential risk of burns, especially in stressful situations. The following tips will help you better protect your employees:
- Use cooking appliances from a reputable manufacturer for professional cooking equipment that has appropriate warnings or safety precautions.
- Make your employees aware of potential burn hazards (verbally or by means of warning notices and specific instructions).
- Make sure that all employees can operate the cooking systems correctly.
- If necessary, you can also provide heat-resistant protective gloves and clothing.
Image: Rational
Danger of slipping due to wet or dirty floors
Spilled liquids, such as oil or condensation, but also food scraps, can turn the floors of professional kitchens into potential slip and fall hazards. The following measures should be taken to reduce the risk of slipping, especially in heavily frequented areas of the kitchen:
- Make sure spilled liquids or dropped food residues are removed immediately.
- Instruct your employees to wear suitable footwear with non-slip soles.
- Place slip hazard signs in a clearly visible position when a source of danger has been identified (also applies to the guest area).
The sources of danger that cannot be seen with the naked eye should also not be underestimated. However, it is precisely these dangers that can have serious consequences – for both employees and guests. After all, they put their health in the hands of the kitchen staff with every restaurant visit or online order. And unfortunately, they are often not as clean as one would like to think.
Image: Rational
Hygiene as a key part of occupational safety
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, kitchen workers only wash their hands thoroughly enough one in three times. This can spread dangerous diseases such as noroviruses, salmonella, campylobacter (bacteria that cause contagious diarrhea) or E. coli. The figures presented by the World Health Organization (WHO) can also make you feel downright nauseous: According to WHO, 600 million people worldwide – or about one in ten people – suffer food poisoning each year as a result of contaminated food. Around 420,000 of them die every year.
But – and this is the good news – there is another way. Simple hygiene measures and using the latest technologies can already prevent outbreaks of disease and thus increase occupational safety in gastronomy.
Personal hygiene: Lie detector increases work safety
We all know them: those signs that remind employees to wash their hands thoroughly. But is that really enough? And are your hands really clean? Biomedical engineer and global health expert Christine Schindler also asked herself these questions. In 2017, she founded the company PathSpot and developed a kind of lie detector for hand washing, or more precisely: a special hand scanner.
Sieh dir diesen Beitrag auf Instagram an
The supposedly clean hands are held underneath it – first with the palms facing up, then facing down. Within seconds, the scanner detects noroviruses, salmonella or other pathogens, even in hard-to-clean areas such as under fingernails. In an interview with Restaurant Business Magazine, the expert explains, “Most people will not pass the scan. Because if you can’t smell, feel or taste it, you don’t know it’s there.” For around 75 percent of employees, the initial steps involve going back to the sink. The good news is that, according to PathSpot, the rate drops to five percent after just a few weeks of training.
The handheld scanner is now used at around 10,000 food service locations around the world, including franchise restaurants such as Taco Bell, Arby’s and Chopt. However, this is not the only place where the device helps to increaseoccupational safety. “We have seen that those who fail the scan wash their hands three to five times more often,” says Christine Schindler in an interview with CNN.
To increase occupational safety with regard to personal hygiene, you should therefore build on your employees’ understanding and awareness of the topic.
- Always point out the importance of hygiene and correct hand washing to your employees, for example via signs, training courses, etc. and/or:
- Use suitable technology that can measure the degree of contamination.
- Provide special work clothes and make sure they are changed regularly.
- In addition, jewelry should be removed and long hair tied back before starting a shift.
Sieh dir diesen Beitrag auf Instagram an
Operational hygiene: Germ-spreader sink and dishwashing sponge
However, it is not just staff that can be optimized in terms of occupational safety. Correct handling of everyday objects such as dishwashers, sinks or kitchen sponges can also help.
The latter actually only have one task: They are used to keep work surfaces and objects clean. Paradoxically, however, the many pores, moisture, dirt and food residues provide ideal conditions for bacteria. And the more we scrub, the more we spread it across work surfaces and kitchen items. German researchers came to this conclusion by examining used kitchen sponge. Accordingly, there are 54 billion bacteria per cubic centimeter on a single sponge. Or as study director Markus Egert from Furtwangen University of Applied Sciences describes it in an interview, “As a rule of thumb, more microbes live in two cubic centimeters of a sponge than there have ever been humans on Earth.”
These include germs that can cause illness. So what do you do to increase occupational safety? Put them in the washing machine? Or heat them up in the microwave? It’s better not to, because these measures only help to a limited extent. Although this kills or removes many bacteria, new ones quickly form to occupy the vacant spaces. And since harmful organisms multiply faster than harmless ones, the concentration of disease-causing bacteria in sponges that are regularly cleaned is even higher. According to scientists, the only solution is to replace kitchen sponges at least weekly, or better yet more often.
As harmless as a sink or dishwasher may seem, it plays an essential role in terms of occupational safety, and more precisely, in industrial hygiene. In fact, while this is how things are cleaned there, it also means that the water is teeming with extremely resilient microorganisms that can cause gastrointestinal infections, for example. “Essentially, these are organisms that occur everywhere in the environment, such as water germs and molds, and relatively many are brought into the kitchen via food,” says Dirk Bockmühl, Professor of Microbiology and Hygiene, in an interview with the magazine bento.
- Clean the sink regularly, not just once at the end of the day; it is also essential to clean it periodically during the day.
- Clean dishwashers regularly with a special cleanser.
The same applies to work surfaces and cutting boards. For example, if you cut raw meat and vegetables on the same board or even with the same knife, there is a risk of spreading germs. While meat is roasted before we eat it, killing germs, salad arrives raw on the table. And this with a wide variety of germs. Different boards for different foods are therefore a must. Just like a professional dishwasher, which, if cleaned regularly, is the end of the line for all pathogens.
Image: Rational
Food hygiene – HACCP
Hopefully, almost no one who has ever worked in the restaurant industry has never heard of HACCP. But what is this and why is HACCP so important for occupational safety? HACCP is the abbreviation for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points and covers the legally required hazard analysis and control of critical points at all stages of food processing. The main objective is to protect consumers or guests from food contamination and the associated health risks. This is also essential with regard to occupational safety:
- Create an HACCP concept tailored to your business and ensure that it is adhered to.
- Rely on a suitable kitchen management system, such as ConnectedCooking from Rational, which automatically records and documents HACCP data.
- Train your employees regularly to keep the topic fresh in their minds.
You can find out more about HACCP and how you can easily implement it in your company with a digital kitchen management system, for example, in our article: Hygiene with added value: What is HACCP and how is it best put in practice?
Image: AdobeStock | davit85
Conclusion:
Today’s restaurateurs are subject to a lot of demands: Food needs come fast, taste good and look good so that the social media thirst can be quenched. But it should also be healthy and sustainable. Last but not least, the workplace or restaurant visit must be safe. Those who fail to meet this requirement risk employee absences due to illness or may even have to close restaurants. This is why it is important to both invest in good equipment or helpful technologies, but also offer regular training on hygiene and occupational safety, so that the health of employees and guests is really in good hands.
Overview of measures for greater occupational safety in the gastronomy industry
Measures to avoid obvious sources of danger
- Using non-slip cutting pads to ensure stability.
- Do not leave knives or other sharp objects in the sink.
- Train your employees in the correct cutting technique to prevent injuries.
- Store such dangerous items appropriately and safely.
- Use cooking appliances from a well-known manufacturer for professional cooking equipment that has heat warnings or safety precautions.
- Make your employees aware of potential burn hazards (verbally or by means of warning notices and specific instructions).
- Make sure that all employees can operate the cooking systems correctly.
- Provide heat-resistant protective gloves and clothing.
- Make sure spilled liquids or dropped food residues are removed immediately.
- Instruct your employees to wear suitable footwear with non-slip soles.
- Place slip hazard signs in a clearly visible position when a source of danger has been identified (also applies to the guest area).
Measures to increase personnel, operational and food hygiene
- Always point out the importance of hygiene and correct hand washing to your employees, for example via signs, training courses, etc. and/or:
- Use suitable technology that can measure the degree of contamination.
- Provide special work clothes and make sure they are changed regularly.
- In addition, jewelry should be removed and long hair tied back before starting a shift.
- replace kitchen sponges at least weekly, or better yet more often.
- Clean the sink regularly, not just once at the end of the day; it is also essential to clean it periodically during the day.
- Clean dishwashers regularly with a special cleanser.
- Create an HACCP concept tailored to your business and ensure that it is adhered to.
- Rely on a suitable kitchen management system, such as ConnectedCooking from Rational, which automatically records and documents HACCP data.
- Train your employees regularly to keep the topic fresh in their minds.
