Reopening Your Restaurant
As we start to reopen dining rooms across the country, it seems a near certainty restaurants will face new reopening guidelines from city and state officials. Whether or not these are suggestive practices or required rules, only time will tell. Nevertheless, the best thing restaurants can do today is plan and prepare. It can be challenging to implement major operational changes last minute, especially in a multi-unit chain that ranges across state lines. Rules might not be the same in every area, but it’s probably safe to assume best practices will be relatively universal.
The National Restaurant Association has released guidelines on how to reopen restaurant operations. These suggestions provide a basic summary of recommended practices that can be used to help mitigate exposure to COVID-19 by focusing on food safety, sanitizing, employee health monitoring, personal hygiene and social distancing. You can download the guide here.
Follow these tips from the National Restaurant Association when it’s time to get back to business.
As pointed out by the national Restaurant Association, the guide is meant to offer restaurants direction and provide an outline for best practices as they reopen. Not every restaurant is the same and therefore not every opening will be the same.
The NRA partnered with representatives of the FDA, academia, the Conference for Food Protection, Ecolab, public health officials, and industry representatives to come up with this list of ideas.
Let’s Begin with Food Safety
Traditionally, the basis of restaurant food safety has derived from the FDA’s Food Code. For the past several decades this has served as the foundation for operating procedures as they relate to safe food handling practices.
Here are some requirements of the Food Code, used by local, state, and federal regulators, that apply to coronavirus mitigation:
- Prohibiting sick personnel in the workplace
- Enforcing handwashing practices
- Monitoring clean and sanitizing procedures
- Ensuring there’s a certified foodeservice manager on site at all times during operating hours
What Should Employers Know?
The Restaurant Association noted that state and local officials could modify opening criteria and requirements to accommodate unique circumstances. For example, Miami and NYC might have very different rules.
As part of reopening preparations, the Restaurant Association said food service establishments should update their existing policies and operating procedures in accordance with the latest local and state officials mandates as well as FDA, CDC, and EPA guidance.
These procedures include:
- Installing social distancing protocols
- Providing protective equipment
- Monitored cleaning/sanitizing/disinfecting procedures
- For self serve or “grab and go”, keep ice bin coolers stocked at minimum levels.
- Ensure there is a ServSafe certified manager on site
- Provide food handler refresher training to all employees
- Where worker served cafeterias, salad bars and buffets are permitted; have sneeze guards in place, replace utensils frequently and place appropriate barriers in open areas.
Here are some bullet points the Restaurant Association provided:
- Thoroughly clean and sanitize entire facility, especially if it has been closed for some time. Focus on high-contact areas that would be touched by both employees and guests, but do not overlook seldom-touched surfaces. Follow sanitizing material guidance to ensure it’s at effective sanitizing strength and to protect surfaces.
- Avoid using disinfectants on food contact surfaces.
- Regularly clean and sanitize table tops, condiments, digital ordering devices and/or menus, check presenters and common touch areas.
- Discard all single-use and disposable items. Consider using rolled silverware and eliminating table presets.
- Remove lemons and unwrapped straws from self-service drink stations.
- Clean and sanitize reusable menus. If you use paper menus, discard them after each customer use. Implement procedures to increase how often you clean and sanitize surfaces in the back-of-house. Avoid all food contact surfaces when using disinfectants.
- Regularly monitor restroom cleanliness and sanitize frequently.
- Make hand sanitizer readily available to guests. Consider touchless hand sanitizing solutions.
Monitoring Employee Health and Personal Hygiene
This will be one of the most critical levers for restaurants. As much as corporate guidelines and practices matter, customers will want to see these practices in action. And their biggest fears continue to center on who’s actually preparing the food. Not to mention, it matters to employees coming back what systems are in place to keep them safe. That might be goal No. 1 for operators hoping to return to some semblance of normal. Many restaurants have temporarily shut down completely because employees weren’t comfortable serving customers. Not the other way around.
Here are the Restaurant Association’s guidelines:
- Per existing code requirements, employees who are sick should remain at home.
- If an employee becomes ill or presents signs of illness, the operator should identify the signs during a pre-work screening and follow the business’s established policies on when the ill employee is allowed to return to work.
- Taking employees’ temperatures is at the operators’ discretion. There is no CDC mandate for taking an employee’s temperature, therefore any operator who chooses to do so should consult with health officials. CDC guidance states the minimum temperature that indicates a fever is 100 degrees.
- Per CDC recommendations, face coverings have been shown to be effective tools to mitigate risk from individuals who show symptoms as well as those who don’t, especially in close environments where it’s hard for people to maintain a three- to six-foot distance. In some states and local jurisdictions, face coverings are required by government officials; some employers require them, too. In all cases, those coverings worn by employees should be kept clean in accordance with CDC guidance. CDC provides overall cleaning guidance here.
- Train all employees on the importance of frequent hand washing, the use of hand sanitizers with at least 60 percent alcohol content and give them clear instruction to avoid touching hands to face.
TRG IS HERE FOR YOU
In this time of uncertainty, we would like to make our experts available to restaurant owners and operators at no charge via phone to offer any support and insight we can to help you navigate this crisis.
Email us at covidrelief@trgrestaurantconsuting.com to schedule a call.
