When you talk about food safety, most foodservice professionals immediately think of temperature zones or cross contamination, and while those are certainly areas of concern, food safety really starts at your receiving dock. Review these easy to follow tips and share with staff to help everyone in your operation maintain a more sanitary and safer foodservice operation.
1. Don’t let harmful bacteria find its way into your kitchen. Remove dirty and potentially contaminated shipping cartons before bringing any produce, meats or eggs into your clean food prep and food storage areas.
2. Keep pests outside where they belong. If you are working with local organic farmers that will not be using traditional pesticides, inspect produce in the receiving area to prevent any insects or rodents from entering in the kitchen.
3. Transfer inspected and clean produce from cartons to food storage boxes or food containers with lids to protect against cross contamination caused by spills or leaky cartons. All liquids and juices will stay in the box with raw meat rather than drip onto your cleaned produce.
4. Speed is important, perishable products should be stored within 15 minutes of being unloaded to maintain food safe temperatures. An infrared non-contact thermometer can help track the receiving temperatures of food and ensure that you are storing food before it exceeds safe food handling temperatures.
5. In the storeroom and in the cooler, keep all product at least 6” off the floor to prevent cross contamination.
If you have any questions about how to create a safe food receiving area, give us a call and any of our sales personnel will be happy to help you with all your receiving and food storage concerns.
