Paper Example on Food Safety and Sanitation

Introduction

Food safety and sanitation do not happen by chance. Restaurants have to practice particular procedures and steps during the whole process of preparing food. Guaranteeing the preparation of safe food for customers in a restaurant calls for the formulation of a safety plan that is based on the Servsafe sanitation principles. These principles revolve around the issues of good personal hygiene, methods of cooking, thawing, reheating and cooling foods, cleaning and sanitizing, time and temperature control and the prevention of cross-contamination. To this end, this report highlights the proper and improper food sanitation and safety practices observed at the Taco Maria restaurant in Orange County. Taco Maria restaurant, which was opened by Chef Carlos Salgado, is located in 3313 Hyland Avenue C21, Costa Mesa. This restaurant is known for its Alta California cuisine that gives customers a taste of the American and Mexican cultures (Taco Maria, 2018).

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Proper Food Safety and Sanitation Practices Identified

Before getting into the sanitation details, one striking attribute about this restaurant with regards to food safety is that most of its employees involved in preparing, storing and serving food have a valid food handler card. This measure is a crucial step forward by the restaurant in ensuring that its staff members are aware of what is expected of them with regards to their responsibilities in maintaining hygienic conditions at the restaurant's facilities and ensuring that all foods are free from contamination throughout all preparation stages.

Switching attention to the sanitation requirements, first, it was observed that the restaurant's eating area, kitchen and the entire premise was kept clean most of the times. The restaurant has employed cleaners who are instructed to mop the floor area every hour or sometimes after every few minutes depending on how fast the floor becomes dirty. These cleaners follow a simple procedure that included scraping the floor area of leftovers, washing the area with soapy water, rinsing the surface using a clean cloth and water then allowing the floor to air dry.

Another good practice noted at the Taco Maria restaurant was the manner in which the kitchen staff sanitized equipment. Equipment such as coffee makers and slicers may be quite tough to clean particularly the inner parts where stubborn pieces of foods stick. However, it was observed that the restaurant's cleaners disassemble such equipment to enable them to reach the hidden parts. Some equipment may prove to be too complex for the cleaners to disassemble. In such scenarios, the restaurant's managers engage technicians to carefully disassemble all the equipment's components that need to be properly cleaned without sabotaging their core functionality.

Other than this equipment, the kitchen staffs at Taco Maria also see to it that all utensils are properly cleaned and stored in sanitized facilities. The restaurant uses detergents, pesticides and sanitizers to ensure that utensils and contact surfaces are properly cleaned before storing using them to serve food to customers. In this line, the restaurant adheres to the "Serving it Safe" guidelines that caution against handling raw foods on the same utensils and surfaces used to handle cooked or prepared foods due to the risk of microbial transfer and cross contamination. Moreover, by washing and sanitizing utensils and food preparation surfaces, Taco Maria effectively thwarts the breeding of flies and cockroaches that may contaminate food and eventually protect customers from getting infected by foodborne diseases.

To cap the proper sanitation habits observed at Taco Maria, it was also noted that most of its food handlers observe personal hygiene. The restaurant has imposed strict standards that require all food-handling employees to maintain simple hygiene through practices such as covering open wounds and washing their hands properly during crucial stages of the food preparation process. The restaurant also provides one-use towels that the food handlers use after visiting the washrooms or touching doorknobs. Injured employees also wear gloves to prevent contaminating food with germs from their healing wounds.

All in all, despite exhibiting the above proper practices in line with the Servsafe principles, Taco Maria showed some undesirable habits as highlighted below that hamper its efforts to guarantee food sanitation and safety.

Improper Food Sanitation and Safety Practices Identified

The main concern with the restaurant's sanitation practices was an apparent lack of training among employees on how to handle hazardous materials, which was evident in the way some sanitizing chemicals and detergents were being stored in containers that originally packaged food materials. This habit may prove to be detrimental especially when these containers are not labeled thereby increasing the risk of such chemicals spilling onto food when handled by new personnel or recruits. When containers carrying hazardous substances are not clearly labeled, employees who have no idea of what is in these containers may accidentally spill some of their contents on stored food or food that is being prepared. Lastly, Taco Maria's storage mechanism for thawing meat was unsatisfactory since the restaurant did not observe the correct temperatures to keep the meat cooler than other foods. As a result, effluents from this meat would be seen dripping onto other foods beneath it.

References

Taco Maria. (2018). about - Taco Maria. Retrieved from http://www.tacomaria.com/about/