The Perfect Breakfast Buffet

In honor of National Hot Breakfast Month, the CPS team has been thinking about how commercial kitchens can keep their breakfast buffets safe for all their customers. We all know breakfast buffets are delicious, but sometimes cross contamination and other food safety issues can occur at these busy buffets. Below, you’ll find a list of tips to create the perfect breakfast buffet.

  1. Start with Training
    The single most important aspect of keeping your buffet safe is training your staff well. This means making sure that they have undergone both internal and external food safety training and that they completely understand the sanitary precautions they must take to ensure the safety of all guests.
  2. Restock Constantly
    Although it might be tempting to stock 300 plates and mountains of eggs and bacon first thing in the morning, doing so can lead to unsafe conditions. Instead, you should stock moderate amounts of everything and restock constantly. This will prevent the possibility of any one food sitting out for too long and will help to prevent contamination to plates and cutlery on the occasion that a guest touches and returns these items.
  3. Reduce Cross-Contamination
    Cross-contamination can pose a real threat to your patients who suffer from food allergies. If a guest serves himself eggs, then uses the same spoon to serve himself potatoes, he could contaminate the potatoes with egg and, if a guest is allergic to eggs, this could result in a medical emergency. To avoid cross-contamination, make sure each dish has a unique serving utensil that is paired with it. Also, place notes around the buffet asking guests to carefully avoid cross-contamination. Your guests don’t want to cause another’s allergic reaction, but they may need to be reminded of this risk. In addition, your staff should monitor the buffet and remove any dishes that they notice have been contaminated.
  4. Maintain proper temperatures
    A key aspect of food safety is keeping dishes at their proper serving temperatures. For some, this means keeping them hot in chafing dishes. For others, this means keep them cold in a container filled with ice. Temperatures should be constantly monitored and any dish that inadvertently reaches an unsafe temperature should be discarded immediately.

By following the tips above, you can keep your guests healthy, happy, and coming back for seconds. We hope you have a great National Hot Breakfast Month!