We Need Safe Restaurants
Restaurants can be dangerous places.
Employees and customers encounter hot food, sharp equipment, slippery floors, alcohol, chemicals, machinery, food safety concerns, and security risks.
When these hazards in restaurants are not recognized and addressed, people can get hurt.
Sometimes seriously.
Common Hazards in Restaurants
What is going on in America’s restaurants?
After decades of working in the restaurant industry, one thing is clear: restaurant safety requires knowledge, training, awareness, and active management.
Those placed in charge of restaurant premises and employees need to recognize dangerous conditions.
They also need to know what to do about them.
Unfortunately, a lack of training, poor communication, weak procedures, and inadequate management oversight can allow hazards in restaurants to develop or continue.
What Contributes to Restaurant Hazards?
Restaurant incidents rarely have only one contributing factor.
Potential factors may include:
- Working at too fast a pace
- Inadequate staffing
- Employee stress
- Fatigue
- Poor personal hygiene
- Improper equipment use
- Lack of employee training
- Confusing policies and procedures
- Poor communication
- Inadequate management oversight
- Failure to recognize changing conditions
Any one of these issues can create problems.
Several happening at the same time can make the situation much worse.
Restaurant Safety Starts With Awareness
Restaurants move fast.
Conditions can change in seconds.
A drink spills. An employee becomes distracted. Equipment is used incorrectly. A customer becomes intoxicated. Food is handled improperly. An argument begins to escalate.
Someone needs to recognize what is happening.
That is why dangerous-condition awareness is an important part of restaurant safety.
Employees need training.
Managers need training.
More importantly, management needs to remain involved in what is actually happening throughout the restaurant.
Management and Hazards in Restaurants
A safety policy sitting in an office does not make a restaurant safe.
Training that employees cannot remember does not make a restaurant safe.
A manager who never leaves the office cannot effectively observe every changing condition in the operation.
Restaurant safety requires action.
Management should identify hazards, establish procedures, train employees, communicate expectations, and monitor the operation.
When conditions change, management should respond.
Restaurant Expert Witness Analysis
After a serious restaurant incident, a restaurant expert witness may examine the conditions and operations surrounding what happened.
That analysis may include employee training, management practices, staffing, policies and procedures, safety programs, incident documentation, and applicable restaurant industry standards.
Understanding hazards in restaurants means looking beyond the incident itself.
The better question is:
What was happening before the incident that allowed the hazard to develop?
We need safe restaurants.
That starts with knowing the hazards, recognizing them, and doing something about them.
Restaurant OSHA Safety and Security ©2016 or by visiting RestaurantOSHA.com.
To find out more about Restaurant Expert Witness, Howard Cannon – America’s most sought after expert witness in restaurant and bar matters, visit RestaurantExpertWitness.com