Today we want to discuss food storage for restaurants. If one of your biggest dreams in life is to own your own restaurant, then part of the planning is about food safety. Food safety is one of the most important considerations for commercial kitchens. You’ll also need to think about seating layout, the team and more.
Food storage is, of course, the number one priority when it comes to keeping your customers safe and producing the most delicious food. You need to think about a couple of things to make sure that not only do you adhere to all health and safety standards, but you also set yourself as the restaurant to the highest possible standards.
Refrigeration
You will probably have multiple refrigerators, and you mustn’t overload any of these. If you overload your refrigerator, your refrigerator will be required to work harder than it should. It will struggle to keep the food at a single temperature and will, at some point, malfunction.
Whenever the refrigerator is overloaded, it is very likely that there will be warmer and cooler spots in certain areas within the fridge, and this means that even if you purchased seven pieces of meat on the same day, not all of them will be as fresh as they could be.
If you have a larger walk-in refrigerator, you’re going to need to make sure that you have the best air cooled condenser And even storage to maintain an ambient temperature.
Floors and shelving
The floors and shelving within your restaurant storage area should be pristine at all times. They need to be cleaned at least once a day and disinfected as required by health and safety standards. It is not uncommon for a portion of food to spill, this could be liquids or grains and land on the floor or the shelves themselves. It won’t take long before mould, and other things will grow on this and make the area unsanitary.
The best way to make sure that your shelving units are clean is to have a set time to have them cleaned down every day and a deep cleaner once a week. Anytime you do see dirt or spills, immediately clean them up and have this written in it to your kitchen standards.
Floors are a hotbed for germs, so make sure that you have all of the floors cleaned twice a day at least and any spills in the meantime cleaned up ASAP. Spills on the floor are a double hazard as they cannot only be a place for bacteria to grow rapidly in the heat of a kitchen, but they can cause a slip or a fall.
Containers
You should make sure that you store all of the food in airtight containers because at the moment that food is exposed to the air, it will begin to spoil.
So if you often cook things in advance, make sure that they are all placed in airtight containers stored in the appropriate place. Sometimes this will be the freezer; other times this will be the fridge, and items that will be used immediately should be within reach. Make sure that you use clear food containers with a space for writing the name, date, and time on the lid. Any food that needs to be stored on the property overnight should be replaced somewhere that is impossible to attract any pests.
Getting low
Something that many home chefs aren’t aware of is that your meat should be placed as low as possible in the fridge.
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When it comes to arranging your refrigerated items, even if they are in a sealed container, your meat should go on the lowest possible shelf.
Since your refrigerator will be temperature controlled, there’s no issue storing meat further down in the refrigerator. Your meat should be stored in the lowest area in the fridge because it prevents any meat juices from leaking out and contaminating any of the other food within your refrigerator.
For example, say you had a steak on the top shelf in your refrigerator, and you had a bunch of apples and some other fresh produce on the bottom. For some reason, the wrap for your steak isn’t tight enough, and some of the juices leak out and onto the apples. This is a huge issue and can be a threat to safety. If was the other way around, and the apples were on the top shelf, and then the meat was on the bottom; all that would be required was to disinfect the area with the meat juices that had leaked onto it.
FIFO
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One of the easiest rules to remember when it comes to storing food is the first-in, first-out rule, instead of stacking new produce on top of each other and making a conscious effort to put the things that need to be used at the top and the things that can wait a little longer at the bottom.
This makes sure that the oldest food is used first and that you will have a massive reduction in the waste that your restaurant produces. 1If you want to help yourself when it comes to the – first-in, first-out – rule, make sure that you personally label everything with the date that it went into the storage area.
And in keeping it with the first-in, first-out rule, you can also keep in mind when in doubt, throw it out. This means that if you have forgotten to write a date on some items or you are not entirely sure when something was purchased, it is better to throw it out rather than cook it and serve it. As you can never be too sure if it is past its best before date or its use-by date. And the last thing you want as a new restaurant owner is to cause food poisoning with bad food management.
Aside from food management, you’ll be considering how you can have a fully booked restaurant night after night. Aside from exceptional food, marketing will play a big role: 5 Social Media Platforms to Leverage.
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