Article Written By: MalcolmJ.Richmond
If you are a restaurant or commercial kitchen owner in Melbourne, you should already know that the reputation of your business relies upon you following very strict guidelines and standards. There are many standards of sanitation with which your kitchen must comply in order to continue trading in Victoria. If an inspection shows that your business is not measuring up, your business could find itself facing huge fines or even shut down in no time at all.
The answer, of course, is to make sure that your kitchen stays in great shape and maintains a high standard of cleanliness. Though this is by no means a complete list, you will find that these suggestions can help keep your kitchen operating at a high standard. You should always store cooked and uncooked foods separately. This is vital when you want to maintain sanitation in your restaurant. Primarily, all your cooked foods will go directly to your diner's tables. Raw foods that are untreated and uncooked may contain various contaminants such as bacteria that are easily transferable to your cooked foods. Maintaining them separately can help you prevent cross contamination from occurring. Always label anything that comes into your kitchen. Labelling everything that comes into your kitchen is essential. Doing so can help your kitchen staff to know what types of foods are in various containers. This will help your staff to cut down on unnecessarily opening containers that they are not using. This will also help you cut down on contamination owing to exposure. Labelling will also help to improve the speed and efficiency of your kitchen. Similarly, you may also want to think about dating things to know when they were received. Temperature readouts. No matter where you keep food, you should make sure that there is a temperature gauge nearby. This can be instrumental when you are keeping cold foods and when you want to make sure that they stay good. Be sure to take the time to consider all options of where to install your thermometers in those areas of food storage, as this will aid you greatly in ensuring your food stays fresher longer. Classes/mini-lectures for your staff. Remember that when it comes to keeping your restaurant sanitized that your workers play a large part. There does tend to be a fairly high turn around in kitchens, so take some time to make sure that your workers are aware of what needs to happen to keep the kitchen up to a high standard. Make sure that you include both front room staff and kitchen staff when it comes to this kind of orientation. When you are running a commercial kitchen, you'll find that you need to think about what your options are going to be in terms of keeping it safe and clean. Educate your staff and keep in mind the fact that there are professional services out there that can help you monitor your existing procedures and give you a detailed list of how they can be improved. Remember that a little money spent on this now can prevent large legal fees down the line.About the author: Malcolm J. Richmond offers ideas and strategies regarding food hygiene on his website where you can also discover to what degree your kitchen stands up against current food safety procedures.
This Article Has Been Published on Sun, 1 Mar 2009 and Read 488 Times