Restaurant Consulting: Learn To Become Your Own Sanitation Inspector
restaurant consulting isn’t a walk in the park. If anything, it’s a job that takes personal experience and creativity to get good at. You need to have both, or else just one or the other isn’t going to get you very far.
I have a restaurant owner friend who came to me, a business coach, one day about his problems with the local health inspection. Thing is, most restaurants worry more about passing the sanitary inspection than implementing good food safety procedures regularly.
I didn’t want to let my friend down. I did some hard research on restaurant consulting for a couple days, and came up with the following solution: why not be your own sanitation inspector?
After doing research on restaurant consulting, here are some tips that come to mind.
Show up unannounced. Don’t tell your employees you’re coming. Surprise them and enter the establishment from the outside, giving you a better perspective of what the health inspector sees when he comes to visit.
Secure an authentic health inspection form. This should give an idea what the sanitation inspector looks for in the operations of a commercial kitchen. This way, you’ll see what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing just right.
Be thorough. Wear a pair of white gloves, if possible. Be as objective about the whole procedure. Make sure your employees are sticking to the handwashing, food storage, labeling and food preparation guidelines.
Talk to your employees. Take time to conduct mock interviews and training exercises with your employees, pointing out errors and correct procedures. It helps to prepare them when the real inspector arrives.
Finally, when all is said and done, it’s time to address the problems that arises from your little operation. Restaurant consulting is nothing without action.
The local sanitation inspector is a great resource for keeping you on track about food safety regulations. But until his, or her, next visit comes, why don’t you hold a small notebook in one hand and a pen in the other and become your own inspector? If it keeps your employees on their toes, why not?
My friend took my advice and did good. In the end, it only took a bit of restaurant consulting experience and creativity to pinpoint a solution to his problem.