According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 93,800 private sector workers in full-service food restaurants had nonfatal injuries and illnesses in a single year.
These injuries varied from critical to minor, but one-third of them required at least one day off work.
A restaurant poses several safety hazards due to sharp equipment, exposed fires, and restricted space. It is essential to be aware of these dangers and to limit them as much as possible in order to make your institution safe for employees and customers.
Restaurants are crowded places.
There's a lot to learn about them. Let's get started.
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There's a lot to do and learn. That is why restaurant safety training is critical to the profitability of your company. Training your restaurant staff not only improves their working environment but also improves the eating experience for your guests.
What is Restaurant Safety Training?
Restaurant safety training is the system you design for your restaurant that defines the rules, regulations, and expectations that your staff must adhere to.
A restaurant has a lot of moving elements, which means a good restaurant training program needs to be rather extensive. From protocol and food handling to safety and compliance, a restaurant training program should cover it all.
While other industries might adopt a "one and done" approach to training, the ideal restaurant safety training is ongoing. Whether it's an employee's first day on the job or they've been with the company for a decade, they should always be learning and training.
A continuous training procedure can assist your workers with any changes to your organization, contribute to increased production, and enable them to flourish.
Check out this basic training for restaurant staff pdf
Why is Restaurant Safety Training So Important?
No doubt, developing an efficient restaurant safety training course requires a significant amount of time and effort. The advantages of establishing a training solution for your restaurant staff, on the other hand, cannot be understated.
Let's take a look at some of the advantages of a high-quality training software that results in a high-quality team:
- Consistent Service and Performance
You can expect to create a team that functions similarly if you teach your staff members using the same methodology. Using a training program can assist in ensuring that your personnel provide consistent service and performance.
- Create a Safer Working Environment
Your employees' and customers' safety should always be the primary concern. An efficient restaurant safety training software will ensure that your staff is well-versed in and follows all current regulations regarding workplace safety.
- Offer Impeccable Service
When all of your workers go through the same training procedure, you develop a team that understands how to collaborate.
An unstoppable force is a team that understands how to operate together. Every time a client dines with you, they will benefit from efficient service, which you will notice when the five-star reviews start pouring in.
- Happy Employees
When a person can go into their job with confidence, you know they're at ease in their role—and it shows.
Employees are more likely to remain at their jobs when they are satisfied with the amount of restaurant training they get. As a result, turnover rates are reduced dramatically. Cheerful people are 12% more productive in their jobs.
- Happier Customers
Service that is efficient and consistent, a safe ambiance, and satisfied team members? That's the winning recipe for happy customers. And the icing on the cake? Growth. Even if you have to jam everything in a 7-minute safety training video.
The advantage of effectively training your restaurant staff is growth.
Customers will have a positive experience if your staff members are pleasant and prepared. They'll adore your restaurant, tell their friends about it, and become repeat customers, and your company will thrive.
The Basics of Restaurant Safety Training
Your restaurant safety training program must be thorough in order to tick all of the boxes for your staff and consumers. Why? Because the restaurant sector is unlike any other, your staff must be prepared for everything.
Giving your staff a restaurant handout that covers a variety of topics will help them be ready for anything that may come their way. Remember that being able to think on one's feet is an important aspect of being a successful restaurant team member.
Did you know? To comply with state and federal labor rules, all training must be compensated. Employees must be compensated for all hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act. This involves training.
Etiquette and Dress Code Guidelines
Establishing an ambiance is the primary goal of restaurant etiquette requirements, despite the fact that the phrase itself may have you stressed over which fork to use for what dish.
Additionally, restaurant maintenance when it comes to a fine dining business could need hiring staff that understands the difference between an oyster and dinner fork.
Your restaurant policies and procedures such as dress code and etiquette might be influenced by the ambiance and design of your restaurant. In your casual coffee shop, for instance, you might want all of your workers to wear the same color aprons over whatever they choose to wear. Or, everyone who works at your casual restaurant might have to wear all black.
Food Safety
Food safety is a major aspect of the work that every employee does at a restaurant. Understanding food safety guidelines guarantees that the food is prepared hygienically, is safe for consumption, and isn't contaminated when it is served to customers.
There are several topics covered under the general heading of "food safety," including foodborne infections, preventing cross-contamination, and appropriate food storage. But when it comes to food safety, there are legal factors as well.
The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Food Code guidelines for safe food handling procedures should be included in the team members' food safety training, at the very least. All staff members must comply with this in order for your restaurant to pass routine health inspections.
Cleaning and Sanitation Requirements
Maintaining a clean restaurant is essential for the success of your business. According to a Cintas survey, 75% of Americans would not dine at a restaurant if there were unfavorable ratings about its hygiene.
Furthermore, hygiene and sanitization are more crucial than ever in a post-pandemic environment. Identifying what is your employee's role is the first step in teaching them cleaning and sanitizing procedures.
Make a written policy that staff members must adhere to, and make sure it includes a checklist to make sure cleaning is done as required.
Workplace Safety
In 2019, 93,800 nonfatal work related injuries happened to employees in full-service restaurants. Of those injuries, around one-third required a minimum of one day of absence from work.
Injuries sustained at work—from cuts and abrasions to falls, slips, and trips—are frequent in the restaurant business. Because of this, it's imperative that your restaurant has workplace safety policies in place and that you've given your staff enough training on them.
Make all possible efforts to prevent accidents in your restaurant by providing all staff members with the necessary training.
Customer Service
The restaurant business is among the industries that prioritize the needs of its customers the most. Your restaurant's success or failure could possibly be directly related to its customer service.
Establishing what exceptional customer service means for your company is the first step in providing training to your staff.
Consider your greatest and worst customer service encounters while developing your restaurant safety training software. Consider what it was about them that made them wonderful or unacceptable.
Role-specific Training
Within a restaurant, there are multiple roles. Bartenders pour drinks, chefs make meals, and front-of-house staff greets guests and all the staff in between.
Depending on the organization of your restaurant, you may have some staff who undertake multiple responsibilities and others who only engage in one.
Regardless of the situation, every employee must get training according to the duties they will be handling. Every person working for your business must be capable of carrying out their designated duties in addition to the daily operations of the restaurant.
Technology/Software Training
Technology is what makes the world go round. Additionally, technology facilitates the seamless operation of your business's operations. Even if you don't use a lot of technology in your restaurant, your staff will almost certainly need to learn something.
Set aside some time for a technology training day (or a tech-training hour) while you're training your staff members.
Giving them the room—both physically and mentally—to transition from their restaurant position to technology training might be beneficial since the technical aspects of their jobs are so different.
Make a list of all the technology you use in your restaurant to ensure that you cover all of the tools you utilize. Don't forget to include:
- Scheduling tools
- Time tracking tools
- Payroll systems
- Self-order kiosks
- Cash registers
- Contactless payment tools
- Team communication methods
- Kitchen order display screens
- Inventory management software
What Should You Look For in Restaurant Safety Training Software?
Customizable Checklists for Auditing
Advanced customizability allows you to modify existing checklists, templates, and SOPs as well as develop your own. The app must be able to adapt to your restaurant's training requirements without affecting software quality.
Real-Time Data Collection
Restaurant managers can access real-time statistics on their food safety performance using these technologies. This data can help in the early detection of possible problems, allowing for fast remedial steps and continual development.
Automation
Training staff at restaurants using an LMS should be a set-it-and-forget-it process. The software features should function as totally or almost completely independent training programs. The software's purpose is to free up workers and managers so they can keep performing value-added services without having to stop to train new staff.
Integration
Look for software that can interact with your existing systems if you already have restaurant management software. This is critical if you want to incorporate your LMS with scheduling or accounting software.
Mobile/Online Functions
The use of mobile, online or cloud-based training software simplifies the training process significantly. It simplifies the storage and retrieval of online courses from numerous devices and locations. It also makes course monitoring and evaluation administration easier.
AI and Smart Analytics
Training software gathers information about your team and your business. A fantastic learning management system will use smart analytics to provide actionable information that will enhance staff training and restaurant services.
To Sum Up
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in every six Americans (or 48 million people) becomes ill, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die as a result of foodborne infections each year.
Finally, restaurant safety training is critical to the success of any business. It not only protects the health and safety of customers and employees, but it can also improve the restaurant's reputation, customer happiness, and financial success.
Streamline Food Safety, Maintenance and Daily Operations with Xenia
Xenia unifies food and beverage operations with tools to standardize, track and measure work across every team, asset and facility.
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Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
Food Safety Management
🌡️ Automatic Temperature Monitoring
Xenia leverages temperature sensors that utilize both Bluetooth and LoRaWAN technology to transmit data reliably to your Xenia account. The monitors work continuously in a range of 40°C to 125°C and an accuracy of +/- 0.4°C. When an temperature deviates from a pre-set acceptable range, management is notified to investigate and resolve.
🔎 Smart Inspection Workflows
Xenia's operations template builder has built in conditional logic into each step. This allows you to trigger actions based on a form response such as creating a corrective action on a failed inspection step, sending a notification to management for out of range meter readings, and much more.
✨ Corrective Actions
Operationalize inspections with fast work order assignment arising from a failed inspection step. All corrective data is stored in the checklist submission for auditing and accountability.
📋 Compliance Reports
View live dashboard summaries of tasks, employee performance, template submissions and more. Filter, organize and export compliance reports to PDF and Excel formats to simplify compliance management.
Maintenance Management
🛠️ Work Orders
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
🧰 Preventive Maintenance
Create a preventive maintenance calendar to ensure asset uptime is not compromised. Attach images, templates, videos and notes to every task and assign to a team or individual for completion.
📲 QR Codes
Generate and attach QR codes to equipment and facility locations to enable fast and accurate inspections and data logs.
📁 Equipment Work History
View work history for every asset and sub asset in Xenia. Review performance data and enable corrective actions to improve your operation.
Daily Operations
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
💪 Team Accountability
Defeat pencil whipping and disorganized responsibility assessments by standardizing operations with Xenia. Track time, collect photos, send messages and ensure high quality work.
📊 Team Performance Reporting
Use Xenia's analytics dashboards to view staff work reports. Filter by asset, location, category or due date and export the report in PDF or Excel
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