The Best Ways to Communicate with Guests About Food Safety

According to a recent report by CNBC:

“Approximately one in six Americans get sick every year from eating contaminated foods, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And as the number of recalls rises, so do questions about U.S. food safety.”

As a restaurateur, you’re already hypervigilant when it comes to food safety within your dining establishment. The Chipotle fiasco a couple years back, however, put everyone — including your guests — on high alert, which means food safety isn’t something you can quietly handle behind the scenes anymore.

Your restaurant needs to be prepared to respond to food safety concerns.

The Best Ways to Communicate with Guests About Food Safety

It makes sense that guests would be concerned about what’s going on with their food and with the overall cleanliness of your restaurant, what with the news so clearly shedding a spotlight on food safety failures in years past. That said, when they vocalize these concerns, you and your staff must be prepared to respond accordingly.

To do this well, here are some ways in which your restaurant should be prepared to communicate with guests about food safety:

1. Get in the Know

FoodSafety.gov provides a list of recent recalls from both the USDA and FDA. Sign up for automatic alerts, so you can stay in the know when the latest food-related hazard is announced. The next time a guest asks one of your staff about whether or not the lettuce used in your salads is safe, they’ll already be equipped with the knowledge to properly answer it.

2. Train Employees on Food Safety Communication

Your staff regularly goes through food safety training, so that they know how to properly handle, prepare, and store food. They also understand how to maintain other cleanliness and safety standards within the restaurant.

In terms of communicating with guests regarding this, however, it shouldn’t only fall to management to answer these questions and concerns. Front-of-house staff needs to be knowledgeable and able to answer questions related to:

• Hand-washing policies
• FOH and BOH cleanliness guidelines
• Cleaning products used
• Food preparation procedures (including temperatures meat are cooked at)
• Segmentation of raw and cooked ingredients
• Storage of meats and produce
• Possible allergens on the menu

Your team should be able to answer these questions without hesitation and effectively put diners’ minds at ease. Part of this also requires a level of empathy. When a guest notifies them of specific food allergies or concerns, staff should respond in a kind and knowledgeable manner, providing safer alternatives for them to consider.

3. Use a Mobile POS

In addition to providing training on communication, equipping staff with mobile POS systems is helpful in this matter. In addition to enabling them to provide answers to less commonly asked questions, they can also use them to input orders tableside. This reduces the chance of customizations getting lost or forgotten as the server makes his or her way around the restaurant and ultimately over to the stationary POS.

4. Provide Health Safety Notices to the Public

As your restaurant completes internal health safety trainings and passes ongoing health inspections, posting the results of those assessments — around the restaurant as well as to your website — would be helpful in easing concerns diners may have.

There are other ways to indirectly communicate your dedication to health safety, too:

• Post notices regarding hand-washing procedures in your bathroom.
• Clearly denote allergens found in menu items or warnings about illness caused by undercooked/uncooked ingredients.
• Place notices directly before food preparation areas to let employees and the public know when strict food safety procedures go into effect (like wearing a hair net).

These public-facing trust marks give you another way to demonstrate your commitment to guest safety.

5. Monitor Feedback and Reviews

Whether you actively encourage guests to leave reviews and fill out surveys, or they seek out ways to do it on their own, you should have a solution that helps you monitor that feedback. There are a wide variety of questions, complaints, concerns, and feedback you’ll encounter in doing so and each should be fully addressed by your management team.

That said, you should pay extra close attention to your guest recovery and feedback software as it pertains to serious food safety concerns and reports of violation. For instance:

• A guest saw an employee return from a cigarette break without washing their hands.
• There was a strand of hair discovered in someone’s food.
• A guest sent back their dish because the meat or fish smelled bad or looked off.
• Someone reported falling ill just a few hours after leaving your restaurant.

Anything that raises a serious alarm about your handling of food safety, should be taken to a private channel and immediately escalated to corporate.

Summary

With your restaurant cleaned up and your team properly trained on keeping it that way, it’s time to prioritize developing the proper communication skills to put your guests’ minds at ease.