Keeping restaurant customers healthy is an integral part to keeping them both happy and satisfied. With so many restaurants in the limelight for poor sanitary conditions and violations of restaurant food safety guidelines lately, restaurant owners are scrambling to make sure their businesses are up to industry standards. Whether you own a family business or bought into a global chain, are you doing everything you could be to follow the restaurant food safety guidelines laid out by the FDA?

While there are several elements to maintaining a cleanly atmosphere, among the most important of restaurant food safety guidelines is streamlining a food safety management system. The FDA recommends a safety system for restaurant operators, known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point. The system includes seven principles that manage every step of food storage and preparation. It’s designed to help restaurant staff prevent food borne illnesses and ensure safe food preparation.

Your restaurant staff members are a key part to maintaining quality cleanliness standards in your restaurant. While you may feel you are educated on the proper processes, it is your employees who come into contact with your food the most, making it imperative to stress proper procedure with your staff.

The FDA recommends four key restaurant food safety guidelines in terms of food handling. First, food should not be touched with bare hands, instead a pre-approved procedure, such as food safe gloves, is necessary. It should go without saying that when food is being served to customers, your employees should not be using their bare hands. However, more often than not, this is a rule that is not strictly enforced, despite how easily it can be.

Workers should also practice proper hand washing procedures, even if they wear gloves . Despite the fact that this is something we learn early on in our lifetimes, it is important to refresh proper hand washing procedure. The FDA issues reminder signs that can be placed in employee bathrooms as a reminder to enforce restaurant food safety guidelines.

Workers should prevent cross-contamination by keeping ready-to-eat food and sanitized food-contact surfaces apart from raw animal foods or dirty cutting boards, utensils and other objects. This also assists with avoiding allergy related incidents, as cross contamination is often the result of allergy related illness within the restaurant industry.

Finally sick employees should be excluded or restricted from food preparation. While it can often be frustrating to be short staffed, contamination by employees is a major cause of foodborne illnesses. As a result, according to CDC 48% of food borne illness is traced to restaurants! Be sure to staff back up employees on your busiest nights, or institute a rule the assists your business with adequate coverage, without putting guests at risk for food contamination.

Following proper restaurant safety guidelines not only help your customers stay happy and healthy, but also keep the doors to your business opened. For more information on how to be sure your business is up to industry standards, visit the FDA website.

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