Introduction

Welcome to Building a Food Safety Culture in a Food Service Operation. It is the intention of the author to provide content and context to building a Food Safety Culture within a commercial operation where food safety is a part of the actions of the employees because they are told they have to do things a certain way rather than the operation instilling a culture of always wanting to do the right thing even when no one is looking.

Having been in the commercial restaurant industry for well over 40 years, I have had the opportunity to work in operations where food safety was a “do it or else” philosophy; I have also worked in operations where safe food service practices were just what everyone did because we were trained on why it was important. We were trained on why it was important to use as employees, why it was important to the guest and why it was important to the success of the operation. In addition, as employees we were given a voice in what was acceptable and unacceptable behavior; we all were truly valued at this operation. How we were treated gave us all a sense of pride in how we performed our jobs and how we treated each other. This restaurant had a positive food safety culture that was spoken and modeled by every employee every day. It gave us all a sense of  the bigger picture of keeping food safe keeps everyone safe.

It is my hope that with this manuscript, more operations adapt the philosophy of doing it right because we can, not because we have to.

So let’s get into it.