Tips for Allergy Safety

When running a restaurant, your top priority is your customers’ safety. One serious risk to your customers is the improper preparation of meals for customers with allergies. Careless cross-contamination could mean that one of your customers will stop breathing. With these serious potential consequences in mind, it is vital that you take steps to deal with allergens properly. We’ve outlined some of our key tips below.

  1. Train Your Staff
    Do not assume your staff knows how to prevent cross-contamination. Instead, take the time to train them. You should hold extensive cross-contamination training when you hire a new employee as well as periodically to keep the protocols fresh in everyone’s minds.
  1. Never Guess
    Establish a culture of never guessing when it comes to questions about allergens. If your servers don’t know every ingredient in a dish, they shouldn’t assume it does not have the allergen their customer is asking about. Instead, they need to get the answer from a manager or by referencing an ingredients list.
  1. Have a System
    When someone with an allergy orders a dish from your restaurant, everyone involved in getting the customer his or her meal needs to know how to handle the allergy request. Your servers should be able to mark on their orders that there is an allergy. When the cook sees this, he or she needs to know what to do to avoid cross-contamination. This may involve using specially-colored knives and dishware that are designated allergen-free, changing gloves, and more.

Allergies can pose serious health risks to diners. By following the tips above, however, you can ensure your diners’ safety. We know you want the best for your customers and we hope these tips will help you to keep them safe!