If you have any experience working in commercial or institutional foodservice, you know the importance of sanitation in the professional kitchen. Often considered as part of sanitation, staff hygiene and food protection are critical components to having a sanitary foodservice environment.
Whether you’re at a five star restaurant or a community soup kitchen, when you look into the back of the house, you should see staff with head covering, beard covering and food safe gloves. While it’s unlikely that a five star chef is going to be working with a bouffant cap on, they will still have their hair tied back and covered, most likely with a chef’s cap or toque.
But no matter your rank or experience in the kitchen, beard nets, hair nets or hair covering and food safe gloves are all crucial accessories that need to be worn in the professional kitchen to prevent food contamination. Additionally, hair nets, beard nets and gloves keep the kitchen equipment like utensils, food packaging, dishware and flatware clean and sanitized. Along with maintaining a sanitary foodservice operation, if a health inspector finds that kitchen staff are not wearing the proper protective apparel, there will often be significant fines levied and the potential for having your operation shut down until the health office is satisfied that safe hygiene practices are in place and consistently followed by all staff.
For many busy kitchens, the best selection of protective hygiene apparel are disposable products. Along with disposable beard nets and bouffants, staff may be required to wear disposable poly gloves and disposable poly aprons. For tasks that are more physical like kneading bread or clean up duty, there are even poly gloves that come all the way up to the elbow. The benefit to disposable products is that they are used once and discarded which minimizes the risk of staff wearing a cloth apron or reusable gloves which are not sterile at the start of their shift. These items are also typically inexpensive and sized so they can fit a variety of shapes and sizes in individuals.
To be sure that you’re staff are maintaining hygiene in your foodservice kitchen, keep a large amount of disposable gloves, aprons, beard nets and hair nets on hand so there isn’t a lapse in standards. Cook’s has a full selection of FSE disposable apparel products for the commercial kitchen which are great for the busy foodservice operation.
