Dining out is supposed to be an enjoyable, healthy and pleasant experience with family, friends or colleagues, and it often is. Many Philadelphia area restaurants even have the added benefit of lower calorie, healthy menu options available to choose from to help you keep your fitness goals on track. One less-common health dining focus is the health and safety of the food surfaces where commercial food is prepared. Is it clean? How often is it sanitized? Here a few restaurant health tips to keep in your back pocket to maximize your restaurant’s customer experience:
Avoid Cross-Contamination
Alarmingly, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) sites insufficiently sanitized food contact surfaces as one of the top restaurant code violations. Healthy eating is more than what you eat: where you eat counts, too. When using utensils to prepare raw meat on commercial surfaces, restaurants in and around the Philly area need to implement best sanitation practices to make sure contaminants from uncooked foods don’t settle on cooked foods. This can happen easily if a utensil used to prepare raw meat, for instance, is then used to prepare a salad. Cross-contamination can cause serious illness, so every precaution should be taken to guard against these unsafe restaurant practices. What is not widely publicized is the fact that more than half of food-borne illnesses are acquired while eating out. With thorough restaurant cleaning practices, this doesn’t need to happen to you.
Clean AND Sanitize Food Surfaces
Restaurant cleaning goes beyond soap and water. Food surfaces, utensils and equipment must all be thoroughly sanitized with a chlorine-based solution comprised of 5 to 25 tablespoons of bleach to one gallon of water or other commercial kitchen sanitation to help ensure safe and healthy restaurant dining. These food surfaces and all kitchen supplies must be disinfected often and well in keeping with restaurant code compliance to give restaurant goers the healthy dining experience they deserve.
We can help to ensure that hygienic cleaning methods are being fully optimized by working with you to introduce deep cleaning and sanitization techniques. By utilizing deep cleaning methods, IMC will help to improve the cleanliness of your kitchen, extend the lifetime of your equipment, and inspire confidence from diners and staff in maintaining a clean atmosphere.
Treat Overall Food Preparation Areas
Healthy dining not only includes guarding against cross contamination and sanitizing food preparation surfaces, but also involves keeping the entire food service area clean. This includes the floors, walls, storage areas, counters, etc. All of these surrounding food areas could contain possible bacteria, viruses, dirt, hair, and other unhealthy residue that violates restaurant inspection codes. Overall food service areas require equal amounts of cleanliness, order, care and sanitation to keep guests from getting sick and spreading harmful germs to others. Keep guests in and germs out by cleaning and treating every crevice of food preparation surface areas using top-to-bottom deep hygienic sanitation techniques to keep your eatery up to code.
Healthy eating goes beyond the menu. It encompasses the overall restaurant experience, from food preparation to the finished dish. Contaminated food prepared on unsanitary kitchen surfaces in unclean environments makes for an unsafe and unhealthy restaurant that will receive health violations. Keep restaurant health and wellness in the forefront of your health, safety and inspection safeguards using detail-oriented, deep cleaning methods that will keep your kitchen workers on the job, and dining guests coming back again and again.