Everyone has heard of poor hygiene in restaurants, from newspaper headlines to expose programmes (Whistle blower, rogue restaurants etc). After being in catering since school, working for various national brands, and private restaurants, i have seen varying standards of food hygiene, from brilliant to horrendous (think reusing out of date food, storing mouldy food, falsifying records, lack of training, no hand washing facilities, to name a few….!!)

    After working in catering for over 10 years before setting up a Food Safety training centre in 2005, i have dealt with various international catering, manufacturing and retail businesses so have come across different priorities in companies when looking at food hygiene, health and safety, food quality, profits etc.  

       As well as running my food safety training centre, i also work part time in catering as a chef to see what is really happening behind the scenes. Fairly recently i have had a couple of experiences with a couple of well known national brands, which shall remain nameless. One, known for value, focuses on portion control, labour and wastage, the other likes to be known for quality and focuses on weekly stock counts and mystery diner scores. Both had very different incentives for their managers and head chefs, neither were based around food safety. In both food safety policy statements, “Food Safety is our number one priority” !! 

     I`ll be updating this soon with a few examples of what really happened and where the priorities seemed to lie ……………!