Operations: Safe and Simple--Thermometers

Technology can streamline food-safety procedures, but operators still keep thermometers handy.

By Kate Leahy, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 4/15/2007

Fred Markoff knows a few things about shipshape kitchens. For 14 months, he oversaw $200,000 weekly food inventories as provision master aboard the Pride of Aloha, operated by the Miami-based U.S. branch of Norwegian Cruise Line.

"The key was to always be cleaning," says Markoff, now owner of Fred’s Hots and Fries in Glenview, Ill. It also meant constant vigilance so cruise-ship safety regulations set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were met. While the ship has state-of-the-art food-safety equipment such as blast chillers, Markoff found that staff food-safety training was as important as equipment.

"I love technology, but unless you look inside the device manually and check the temperature with a thermometer that you know is accurate, you might run into a problem," he maintains.

Ensuring that food stays safe often comes down to two main principles: Minimizing exposure to the 40F to 140F food-safety danger zone and avoiding cross-contamination. While advanced equipment is useful for temperature control, many operators feel that investing in food-safety training and thermometers has more value for food-safety maintenance.

At Tiffany’s Casual Dining and Bar in Morris Plains, N.J., General Manager Keith Hancock favors electronic probe thermometers for line checks and for roasts. Maintenance of kitchen equipment also keeps things safe. Bentley Hetrick, vice president of construction and purchasing for Santa Monica, Calif.-based Fatburger, buys grills that cook products evenly to lessen the chances for human error. He also favors cooling hot foods faster with frozen wands. Even so, "All of these things are only as good as how well your people are trained," he says.

Keeping things simple also is vital: New equipment requires additional staff training. "High-tech tools are great if you know how to use them," says Ed Striebe, executive chef at Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, Vt. "But training is so important for getting your staff to understand why they’re doing something."

Carrol Symank, vice president of food safety and training for Chicago-based Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, agrees. "The minute that you bring in new equipment, you have to make sure that it’s maintained," he says. Symank trains staff to keep handwritten temperature logs for dishwashers, refrigeration units and perishable deliveries. "There’s not a machine outside of a great thermometer that’s going to do that for you."

Correctly using a thermometer is critical. Striebe teaches every cook how to calibrate a thermometer in boiling or ice water and how to sanitize it between uses.

Michael Arnopp, Fatburger’s director of training, embraces technology as a way to train staff more effectively. A third-party vendor hosts a Web site where employees take an online course in food safety and are tested about what they’ve learned. Results are sent to Fatburger’s human-resources staff.

"I was looking for a way to deploy specific content to-employees and have it tracked and measured while not taking away from one-on-one training," he says. It also didn’t require purchasing additional equipment. "Workers boot up a Web browser, go to the Fatburger site and log in."

Larger operators can benefit from Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans. Harvard University’s commissary kitchen became HACCP-certified last year. While Martin Breslin, director of culinary operations for the Cambridge, Mass., institution, is looking for programs to automate some of the steps, he hasn’t found one that beats recording temperatures by hand. Yet he doesn’t mind the extra paperwork because of its positive impact on food safety. "With HACCP, you assume nothing. You document real information. It takes away guesswork and minimizes human error," he says.