Protect Your Kitchen Staff With Our Safer Commercial Disposal Unit Alternative
Hot grease, open flames or wet, slippery floors can make any environment dangerous. Where can you find all three of these? In virtually any commercial kitchen.
If you don't manage your kitchen well, these potential problems can become downright hazardous. In fact, kitchen accidents account for around 190,000 injuries a year.
There are several steps you can take to ensure safety in your kitchen. Let's take a look at some best practices you should be following in your commercial kitchen.
Use Non-Slip Flooring
Commercial kitchen floors can get slippery fast. The very nature of the work dictates that the floors become hazardous. There's always water on the floor in the dishwashing area. Oil and fat are always splattering on the floor at the cook station.
Even the prep station doesn't stay clean. Food scraps are every bit as slippery as the banana peels in cartoons portray them.
Of course, the most obvious way to avoid employees slipping and falling is to clean the floor regularly. You should require that any major spills be cleaned at once. But in a busy kitchen, it's not possible to keep the floor sparkling clean at every moment.
To keep your employees securely on their feet, non-slip flooring is your friend. You should also put down non-slip mats and require non-slip footwear in particularly slippery areas.
Don't Let Grease Accumulate
Grease is the bane of a cook's existence. It seems to get everywhere and it is such a pain to clean. Regardless of the effort, you should require that grease be cleaned up daily. Plus, every once in a while your staff should do a deep clean to get all the hard-to-reach areas.
This is extra important because grease is very flammable. If you let grease build up in your kitchen, a small spark could send the whole thing up in smoke.
Grease fires are also very difficult to put out. It's far better to avoid them right from the start.
Clean Your Exhaust Hood
Your employees should clean what they can off the exhaust hood on a regular basis. But you should also hire a professional cleaner on a regular schedule for when the kitchen is shut down which is usually overnight. The frequency depends on how much and the type of cooking you do.
The exhaust hood harbors grease, smoke, and heat. These are all factors that can quickly add up to a kitchen fire. Plus, the more gunk that's in the hood, the less it can properly do its job ventilating the kitchen.
Provide Proper Training
One of the most efficient ways of keeping your commercial kitchen safe is to train your employees. If they know what to do they can avoid a lot of potential problems.
They will also know what to do in the event of an emergency.
Regular Cleaning Practices
As we've mentioned, keeping grease to a minimum avoids fires and wiping up spills avoids falls. Make sure that your employees understand what is expected of them to keep everything clean.
This is important not only for your employees but also for your customers. Food coming out of a clean kitchen is far less likely to be contaminated or cause someone to get sick.
Handling Food Properly
Food safety is extremely important in the restaurant industry. Not only is it bad that people get sick but also the reputation of your business depends on it. If people get sick after eating your food, you'll be out of business pretty quick.
Therefore, it's important that your employees know how to properly handle food. This includes defrosting food the right way and keeping cooked foods at the right temperatures.
Employees should cool food correctly for storage. Plus, they should wash fruits and vegetables thoroughly. They should know to wash their hands frequently and especially after using the restroom.
Post signs with pertinent information in strategic areas around the kitchen. This will help to ensure that employees remember to follow these best practices.
Use Caution With Equipment
There is a lot of equipment in a kitchen that, if used improperly, can be quite dangerous.
Knives are a basic tool that you will find in every kitchen and everyone knows how dangerous those can be. In fact, lacerations from knives and slicers are one of the top kitchen injuries.
And that's just one basic piece of equipment. You may have grills, fryers, ovens, dishwashing machines, meat and cheese slicers, or any other number of dangerous items. All of them can be handled safely, but only by people who have been properly trained for what they're doing.
Quick Treatment Of Burns
Almost every commercial kitchen has cooking equipment that gets very hot. Even sandwich shops may have an oven for baking or toasting bread. Most other types of establishments will have gas or electric stoves.
This means there is a huge potential for burns.
There are also lots of ways to minimize the risk of burns. Don't overcrowd stovetops and turn the handles of pans inward so they won't get knocked off.
Make sure employees know how to properly handle fryers and the like. And provide them with proper safety equipment, like hot pads, mitts, or gloves.
Properly Maintain Equipment
Keeping your equipment running efficiently is an excellent way to keep your commercial kitchen safe. Not only does this avoid injuries, but also fires.
Faulty electrical equipment mixed with a bit of flammable grease is the recipe for a quick kitchen fire. Once fires get going, they're hard to put out. Of course, knowing how to put out a fire should be part of your employee's training.
But it's best to avoid it from the start. And make sure that you have someone clean out the grease trap on a regular basis. It's a nasty job, but a necessary one.
Replace Your Disposal
Not only are commercial garbage disposals expensive to repair and replace, but they are also very dangerous. They can mangle silverware or anything else that comes in contact with their blades. Our commercial disposal unit alternative is effective, affordable and much safer than a standard commercial garbage disposal.
Keep Your Commercial Kitchen Safe
There are lots of hazards that can pop up in a commercial kitchen. But as long as your employees know what to do, they'll stay safe.
If you want to avoid having any downtime in your hotel kitchen from having your commercial garbage disposer break down in the middle of a dinner rush, check out our food scrap collector to keep your kitchen running smoothly.