Use Safe Food Handling Processes to Improve Kitchen Teamwork and Productivity

A safe food handling culture in your professional kitchen can improve business outcomes, engage staff, enhance your business’s reputation, enrich your patrons’ experience and boost profits. So let’s explore a few ways to develop your business’s interests by initiating a gold standard in safe food handling procedures.

1. A strong food safety culture will ensure hygiene and sanitation are priorities in your kitchen. Build this culture by consistently emphasising food safety, the potential hazards of poor food safety and holding team meetings to troubleshoot known risk areas in your kitchen. Then watch as staff begin to educate each other and discuss ways to improve systems in your kitchen. By taking this approach to a common area of interest to all involved in your facility, you will notice changes in your staff in a variety of ways.


2. Ensure your waiting staff are cleanly attired and conduct themselves professionally whenever they are visible to the public. Members of the public will make snap assessments about an establishment based on the cleanliness and appearance of the staff they see. Professional front of house staff will give patrons confidence that kitchen staff are similarly proficient.
   


3. Train new staff quickly so they feel part of a team, understand the acceptable standard and adopt best practice. New members to any professional team are more likely than established members to make inadvertent mistakes simply because they are unfamiliar with the new processes. Spend time with your new staff and train them in the jobs they are expected to perform. As chef or restaurant/kitchen manager, you need to be satisfied the new team members can perform their duties to the required level. As a consequence, the new team member will begin to feel part of the bigger whole.
   


4. Fully function, high performing kitchen teams have lower staff turnover. This saves enormous amounts of time, money and heartache in relation to consistently training and dealing with new staff. Such teams also have high-quality output produced efficiently in a harmonious atmosphere.
   


5. The above teams also have lower absenteeism coupled with a can-do attitude. Absenteeism can be crippling to staff morale and adds to costs. People arrive at work not knowing if other staff will be present and this puts them in a negative frame of mind from the outset. Conversely, members of highly productive teams don’t want to let the side down so bring a positive energy, professional efficiency and can-do attitude to every shift.
   

Achieving this level of teamwork takes time yet is a must for all professional kitchens. Fortunately, there is a direct route to achieving this. The requirement for safe food handling procedures is a concept everyone understands once the dangers are spelt out. Consequently, it represents an indisputable unifying ideal all staff members willingly buy into. As chefs and restaurant/kitchen managers, your role is to lead from the front by beginning the discussion so the culture of excellence grows in this area. Then watch as it permeates every aspect of the business and improves your productivity and profitability.