Clean up with good hygiene

Kitchens have become a legal minefield for the busy publican. As food sales in pubs have increased, so has the legislation that seeks to ensure the operation is as safe as possible for both customers and staff.

Here, DiverseyLever, the biggest supplier of cleaning products to the licensed trade, gives advice on how to avoid getting into trouble with the authorities, whether it's the EHO or Europe, and looks at how to get the best results out of chemicals

The arrival in your kitchen of an environmental health officer (EHO) need not be a traumatic experience - remember Basil Fawlty's manic reaction in Fawlty Towers? - as long as you are prepared and you know your responsibilities.

By law every food business is subject to routine inspections by its local authority but not many people know that it doesn't have to give notice that it is calling. In fact, government guidance states that such visits should be unannounced so that the EHO can fully identify any risks from a business's activities, assess what controls have been put in place to minimise these risks, identify contraventions of food safety legislations and analyse how these can be corrected.

The number of rules and regulations involved in the safety of kitchens is seemingly endless and the cost of breaking them can cause serious problems for many food businesses.

By complying with food safety standards you can avoid legal action from failing to meet the expectations of an EHO - itself a lengthy and financially demanding process - and minimise the chances of an accident.

There is no substitute for being on your guard at all times. As Ray Huntzinger, customer sector manager at DiverseyLever, puts it: "To make sure your kitchen doesn't receive an EHO visit on an 'off day' you have to stay at the top of your performance levels."

Firstly, get a routine. Whatever the size of your kitchen, the implementation of a food safety policy and disinfection routine is essential to its effective running.

By establishing a safe system at the outset high standards are more likely to be maintained by trained members of staff.

An established system with day-to-day checks and routines will install the importance of safety and hygiene into the minds of staff, leaving less to chance on the day of inspection.

"One of the EHO's roles is to see that all the hazards are being controlled and a licensee can prove this is the case more easily if there is a thorough hygiene and cleaning routine," explained Ray. "Remember, first impressions really do count.

"Another part of maintaining high levels of hygiene on a daily basis, without incurring unnecessary costs, is to use the most effective products," he continued. "Your hygiene products need to be high performance, easy-to-use and versatile so that they are cost-effective."

DiverseyLever's own kitchen cleaning system, comprising a pot wash, a general purpose cleaner/heavy duty degreaser and surface cleaner/sanitiser, is designed in such a way that staff can be easily trained and so confident about their abilities to maintain health and safety standards.

The products are easily applied, with dispensing systems that ensure the correct dosage is used at all times, and have easily identifiable packaging.

"There is no need for safety procedures and routines to cause more work for kitchen staff, leaving them with less time to spend on what they do best - creating food," said Ray. "This programme enables food businesses to worry less about safety and cleaning hygiene by allowing them to trust in the products, which have been exhaustively tested not only to do the job but to be safe for staff and to help a business comply with health and safety regulations."

A kitchen cleaning system should not only make sure your pub avoids running foul of food safety laws but also be safe for your staff to use.

Slippery floors, for instance, are an obvious danger, as are corrosive cleaning materials. Under European legislation you can now be made responsible for the level of safety in your kitchen, meaning you must make sure your staff use the safest available products.

The cost of kitchen accidents is vast - socially and financially - and as well as helping their customers get maximum performance from cleaning products, suppliers are also working to minimise the risk of accidents.

According to Ray Huntzinger, a recent survey among 660 kitchen managers revealed that two out of three commercial kitchens have at least one accident every year with the cost averaging out at around £2,800 per accident.

"We realised that our clients needed to reduce not only the cost of an accident but also the likelihood of accidents happening in the first place," said Ray.

"DiverseyLever has identified the factors that cause these accidents and has set about designing effective products to ensure a safer working environment and help its customers reduce these costs."

As well as all the direct costs of an accident - including initial downtime, sick pay, health and safety fines, compensation claims and higher insurance premiums - there are the indirect costs. These include the recruitment of replacement staff, training them, their initial inefficiency and loss of business due to adverse publicity.

"These all add up to a significant issue," warns Ray.In an effort to help customers reduce the costs associated with the risk of accidents DiverseyLever has developed SafeKitchen. Its main aims are to offer safer, better chemicals and systems for all kitchen cleaning, to reduce slip accidents and to encourage compliance with regulations.

Ray is clear about the benefits: "Working in an accident-free environment results in happier and more motivated staff. By working actively with customers, cleaning companies can reduce upsetting accidents in the kitchen and avoid the legal consequences.

"We are working with customers to reduce accidents while they are cleaning ovens or washing dishes, or in combating dermatitis caused through frequent hand washing, or in making sure floors are spotless but not slippery.

"Practical help is available through a comprehensive support network of customer service advisers, trainers and industry specialists. Our control and planning tools, checklists, method cards and tools to help regulatory compliance have been perfected by years of experience."

Getting the dosage right​

If you ask a member of your cleaning staff to make up a 1:8 mixture of cleaning solution, are you sure you know what you would get? How about making up a 2.5 per cent solution of powder? Could you do it?

Cleaning chemical suppliers always tell users how to make up solutions accurately but the units are not always practical if you are a cleaner in a hurry!

Most detergents are made with a generous margin of error, so you may feel that the concentrations don't have to be extremely exact. But it is important to realise that if you use less than the recommended amount, the immediate effect is only poor cleaning. With a disinfectant, if less than the recommended strength of solution is used the germ-killing action is lost, leaving you with serious health and hygiene implications as well as poor cleaning.

One answer to the problem of accurate dosing is to use a concentrate which can be accurately dosed through a dispensing system. Since the launch of its Divermite brand in 1996 DiverseyLever has installed more than 175,000 dispensers.

Divermite comes in two versions: Divermite S for dispensing into spray-bottles or into buckets with the help of a ladle, and Divermite Plus which dispenses directly into the sink via a directable spout. Additionally, wall mounted dispensers, with patented built-in repeat delay, prevent accidental overdosing.

For added safety and to avoid unhygienic mistakes, the re-usable