How to Store Food in Your Restaurant

If you are running a business in the food industry, you’ll already be aware of the importance of having strict health and safety and food hygiene rules.

Your restaurant is designed to help the public be entertained, fed and feel part of something, and yet that doesn’t mean that you don’t want it to be a success! You can have all of the community feel of a restaurant but for it to be successful, it has to be safe and maintain safety for the public – all while bringing in a profit for you.

Learning how to store food properly in your restaurant is going to help you to make a positive difference to your bottom line, but you need to know exactly how to store food for freshness to do that. From buying aluminium rolls for supermarkets & retail coverage, to buying it for your food platters, you should ensure that you learn as much as you can about food storage in the early days of your restaurant opening. So, let’s take a look at how you can manage food safety while you are learning to get your business off the ground.

Learn the legislation. Understanding food safety legislation in your local area is going to help you to understand how food storage should work in your restaurant. You can’t actually open an eatery in any location without your food safety certificates, so you should have a basic knowledge of this anyway. As the deliveries and prepared foods are stored in your restaurant, they have to be rotated so that the dates are the closest used by dates to be seen by your team. If you understand anything about health and safety when it comes to food, this is one of the first pillars that you need to remember to adhere to.
Remember the refrigeration rules. When it comes to your cool rooms, your pantry, your freezers, and your refrigerators, you need to remember that these are machines that do require heavy maintenance. If you skip any of your maintenance appointments due to cost, you need to Decide whether this business is for you when it comes to food and it comes to your insurance and your reputation. You need to make sure that you’re not giving your customers food poisoning. When you chill food, it should always be below 5° and when freezing below -18 you shouldn’t overcrowd the refrigerator or the freezer because the air has to circulate freely.
Keep foods separated. Raw meats should always be stored away from fresh fruit and vegetables. Your dairy products should be stored away from the meat. You need to make sure that you are not having an issue with cross contamination in your refrigerators. Prepared foods that have already been cooked up and are being refrigerated should be stored away from raw foods as well to prevent any cross contamination there. You want to reduce the spread of bacteria from one place to the next.
Always have airtight containers on site. You need to reduce the spread of harmful bacteria in the fridge and also on counters at room temperature. Airtight containers should be clean and sanitary and then you can store food within them and keep them tightly sealed. Always make note on the containers how long the fruit has been in there for so that you know when the appropriate time is to throw it out.
Maintain container sealing. An airtight container is only going to be airtight if the ceiling is correct. When you wash it, ensure that the seals are checked and discard anything with excessive signs of wear or cracks. If you notice that the ceilings are falling apart, then you have to throw that away too.
You need to be organized. All of your food should be listed with use by dates and best before dates and they should be labeled clearly. All containers in any case should have contents listed, preparation dates and storage dates listed along with a signature of who prepared it. You have to stay very strict when it comes to food health and safety, and you should also have ingredients lists on everything in case of allergens.
Don’t forget label adhesives. When it comes to choosing labels to indicate the above information, you need the correct adhesive. The right adhesives will not wash off when you put them through the dishwashers, and these label adhesives should be manufactured to be removable on your terms. They can also be permanent or dissolvable should you choose that way. You should ensure you have the right adhesive to suit the storage requirements of the food. Whether it’s in the freezer, the fridge or the pantry.
Exercise caution with high risk foods. Cool desserts, dairy products, sliced meat sandwiches and salads should always be cooled below 5°. Roasts, stews, casseroles, curries and soups should be stored above 60°. The temperature danger zone with food is between 5 and 60, which means that bacteria can readily grow within this range. It’s important that you keep the food at these temperatures.
Don’t forget to cover food. If you have to leave food out for any reason, it should be covered and that’s why we talked about the aluminium foil earlier on. You get to keep dust insects in any airborne bacteria away from the food, and it’s a very simple technique for practicing effective food safety.
Displayed foods should be at the correct temperature. Did you know that display food is at a particularly high risk of falling within the temperature danger zone that we’ve mentioned? With a food thermometer, you can conduct temperature checks to see that the display food is above 60c or below 5°. Maintaining the food safety standards for your food is an essential element so that you can maintain the health of the public. If you want people to come to your restaurant, you don’t want them to take away an unhealthy dose of food poisoning with them.