Blog posts of '2023' 'July'

^{Always Food Safe has partnered with ChowNow to provide businesses with a great opportunity to level up their takeout services.}

^{Founded in 2012, ChowNow has partnered with over 20,000 restaurants to save them over $640 million in commission fees. With tools like commission-free ordering, customized marketing, and on-call restaurant experts, their online ordering products are designed to help restaurants grow their guest lists and keep more profits.} 

^{Always Food Safe believes in providing our customers with tools, resources, training, and certification that help their business and ChowNow also believes in this so it is a great partnership!}

If you are interested in learning more or getting a demo, visit Get ChowNow!

Always Food Safe has partnered with Housed Working and Healthy to provide food safety certificates to their students!

Housed Working and Healthy helps people get back on their feet by providing them with housing and work opportunities. Allowing people to learn new skills and get back into the workforce is something that we wanted to help out with. Their students and intern work in the restaurant field and need to have the proper food safety training and certification to move forward. 

Always Food Safe is proud to provide this training, exams, and certification to their students. We have a great time going in and helping out as well as seeing their students pass their exams! 

Check out their website to see the positive impact they have on the community and how you can help out as well - https://housedworkingandhealthy.org/

Always Food Safe food safety certifications help short-staffed restaurants maintain high standards of quality and product

Almost every sector of the American economy is facing labor shortages and staffing challenges. The service industry is certainly no exception. And while restaurants have long struggled to maintain consistent staff in what is seen as a transient industry, the problem has only gotten worse: Food service is currently operating with a 400,000-worker gap from pre-COVID to today.

But here’s the thing: Neither your customers nor food inspectors care how short-staffed you are. They expect the same high standards of quality and product no matter what you’re facing behind the scenes.  

Thankfully, improved food safety training can help maintain those standards with fewer cooks in the kitchen.

Managing the Labor Shortage with Food Safety Training

With staffing shortages affecting every part of the restaurant, efficiency is increasingly important and elusive. Let’s discuss how food training certification can help your restaurant during a labor crunch.

Protect Your Customers

Ensuring your guests have a good experience is the key to success for any restaurant. This means more than just good food and friendly customer service.

Unsafe food handling practices, poor hygiene, contaminated food prep surfaces, and equipment all contribute to foodborne illnesses. One in six Americans get sick from foodborne illness every year, 128,000 end up in the hospital, and 3,000 die (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Proper food training then helps minimize the risk of foodborne illness, and ensures food handlers:

• Know the different types of food contamination and understand how food becomes contaminated
• Become familiar with potentially hazardous (high-risk) foods and how to handle them
• Understand the causes – bacteria, temperature abuse, etc. – of foodborne illness
• Follow rules for storage, thawing, preparing, cooking, and serving
• Thoroughly clean and sanitize surfaces, dishes, cooking utensils, and other equipment

Allergies are of major concern as well. 32 million Americans have food allergies, as reported by Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE), and a food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency room every three minutes.

Avoid Costly Mistakes

With fewer staff members available for support, costly mistakes are much easier to make. Issues with food safety at your business can be incredibly expensive as well as damage your reputation.

Food training helps mitigate issues like:

• Spoiled food due to improper rotation
• Customer sending food back because it is undercooked, smells foul, or has foreign objects like hair, paper, plastic, etc. in it
• The presence of rodents or other pests brought by improperly stored food, or inadequately cleaned premises
• Fines (or even getting shut down) for failed health inspections

Boost Your Business

Improved training operations help restaurants to do more with less, and then allow managers to operate more efficiently with a lean staff. It thus boosts your business’s bottom line. Food safety training:

• Protects the reputation of the business, and helps prevent negative reviews online, complaints from customers in-house, and other forms of unwanted negative attention
• Helps reduce operational costs related to food waste, prep time, pest control, and covering meals sent back to the kitchen
• Helps prevent costly fines or – worst case – the closure of your business

The best way to protect your customers and your business from food safety issues – and subsequent financial, legal, or reputational consequences – is by getting certified from an ANSI-accredited, SCORM-compliant food safety training program. Food handlers who have completed a food safety training course have the skills and knowledge needed for safe food handling, and proper allergen management, and are able to maintain high standards of hygiene and cleanliness.

Always Food Safe’s comprehensive training program gives food handlers everything they need to follow safe food handling practices in your restaurant. Plus, the process is easy and efficient: Our online Food Handlers, Food Manager, and Allergen Awareness courses can be completed through fully remote video training, with the option to retake the test if you don’t pass the first time.

Get started today!