Food safety doesn't usually fail all that once.
misstep there, and employee rushing because the kitchen's buried, a cooler that should be fine, a thermometer, no great checked in weeks. And over time those little things become habits.
“That's what this series is really about. Not fear, not inspections. Not trying to scare operators.”
It's about understanding how disciplined the kitchen's actually operate and why the smallest details ought to make the biggest difference when it comes to protecting guests, staff, and
ultimately, who are reputation. Eric Moore from Tesla, North America, is back with us for episode
two of Inside Food Safety. And today we're talking about complacency, operational, blind spots, in the warning signs that kitchen's can't afford to ignore. Eric, let's start here. What separate to kitchen have an abnormal operational mistake from a kitchen becoming genuinely unsafe. Hey Carl, glad to be back looking forward to the conversation. I think that's a really great question. And it truly, I think the difference is leadership. Well run kitchens are usually
a beautiful thing to watch and whether you're a part of it. You know, sort of the orchestra
of things that are happening in, in that environment. You know, or you're, you're an observer
and you can, you can visually just watch like the mastery of everybody working together in the US. But it takes leadership, right, to do that. And if you remove that leadership or something begins to erode in the leadership of a kitchen, that's where things begin to break down. It applies to food safety, as well as occupational safety, and like the products that the kitchen is turning out to be, to be all honest with you. But it's a, it's a cascading effect,
good ol' effect, multiple things, not just food safety. And by the way, welcome back to the show.
“This is, I love these things. These are awesome. I think we're doing the good work if you will. So”
I think it's always going to come down to leadership. But it's also something a little bit more
abstract, and that is your protocols, your SOPs. It's your standard operating procedures. And, and ultimately, yes, there's somebody where the buck must stop against. But you know, there's still 60, 70 people, 100 people in a restaurant. And accountability is important. So I think a lot of this has to do with the culture of the establishment, any particular establishment. Yeah, I mean, that's a very, that's a very good point. And, you know, when I refer to, you know,
leadership, you know, that, that also begins to incorporate, you know, the behaviors, the norms of the people operating within that environment, right? You know, leadership takes, takes many forms, right? And one of those is employees, self empowerment. If, if everybody is, is led properly, everybody should feel a nut like comfortable enough to be able to call their, you know, their line may out if they skip a step, do something wrong. You know, miss, you know, miss something.
That's leadership, right? It's not just the the executive chef for a kitchen manager or a fill on the blank of of the role. It's everybody hunting together to be a, you know, a true team, making sure that, you know, things don't get overlooked or missteps. What is commonly referred to is food safety culture, the norms, the, the beliefs that everybody in a specific environment shares, it takes leadership to establish that, right? But then it takes your support and employee
empowerment to maintain that, that incorporates everybody that's working in that establishment. From the house, back to the house, you know, your, your porters, your dishwasher, your clerk leaders, your, you know, everybody that's involved. When, when one of those, those things starts to wane right or, or weaken, then the rest of the, the rest of the system begins to, to degrade and get a little weaker, too. There's a thing when you're talking about leveraging or leaning on the staff,
“you have to do it. And most of these restaurants are run by, you know, their I say kids, you know,”
18, 19, 25 year old people. There's a lot of responsibility in it. I'll give you an example. We were, we were in Chicago this past week for the National Restaurant Association Show. And I know we just missed you. You're at the, the food safety stomach just like a week before, which was, uh,
Which we could have linked up.
And the food was good. The experience was good. How so recognize that there were some indicators that
perhaps food safety in general wasn't being taken seriously. So right, when you walk in the front door, there was debris from the outside right in the four year when you walk in. And it kind of made it to way into the restaurant. That was like sign number one. And then literally staff, I don't know what they were doing if they were cleaning vents or one, but like they were two of the servers that had a dust particle in their hair on their shirt and whatnot. And, you know, I'm sure it's something
silly, but optics matter. Now, the bathroom was clean. The, you know, the food again, you know, everything was was, uh, executed well. But you really have to wonder who's in charge of the restaurant. That's a unique example. There are indicators, if you will, of how well an establishment is run, like you were indicating, right, there was a little bit of debris or something inside the four year that the enters into an establishment. When you sort of, if we pivot a little bit from, you know,
front of a house to the, to the back of a house, my, what I have always done, you know, throughout
my career is, you know, it's a pretty quick, easy assessment. I look at, I look at any hand sink in a production area. If it's dry, then I know there's, there's, there's some kind of breakdown in the hand washing process. That, to me, is concerning. It is a teachable and, in education type of type of opportunity, and mother indicator. Yeah, it's right to, to hand sinks is if they're obstructed or they don't have towel, or they don't have soap. It does, if, if we mark and back,
so the first episode that we have limiting the, the transference of what, you know, we'll, we call these spot five risk factors. You know, one of those, if your call is related to health,
“in hand washing is the best way to, to limit the spread of any of anything, whether it's in a,”
in a, in a food service establishment, or in your home, right? It's, that's the easiest way to, to stay healthy is regularly or routinely properly wash your hands. If nobody's using the hand sinks, then that's, that's a, that's a direct indicator that there's a breakdown probably more than one process. It can allow, whether it's, it's a regulator, or it's somebody that works at that establishment to start looking at other things. I don't know if that sort of
correlates with, with the, with the direction you were going, but, you know, when I hear the, the example, you provided, like, that's where my head goes, right? It goes to,
that is the first place that I will, I will always look and always, and always have looked.
Well, there's two eyeballs here, right? There's two optics here. There is the, from the industry perspective, and then there is, yeah, I'm a guest, and I'm just going out to eat, right? I'm just, I'm out there in my customer. I think what you brought up was it was terrific, looking for a hand sink, whether or not it's wet or not, that's 100% true, and it is, it would be ultra-concerning if they're all dry. And not many people get to get into the kitchen.
I get in the kitchen, you get in the kitchen, but as a consumer, you walk in the front door, and, you know, you have to figure that whatever's happening in the front of the house, in the areas
“where customers can't go, you have to think, man, hey, what does it look like back there?”
And that's the indicator, and that's the culture, and that goes back to, hey, who's in charge, who is, where is leadership? Because it wasn't just a little bit of debris. There was just a lot of outside stuff on the inside, and it went deep into the restaurant itself. I had no idea where that came from. I will tell you this. You know, and I'm open-minded about a lot of things too, man. You know, at the end of the day, things do happen. So we were there for
convention week. So there was God knows 100,000 people there converged on this part of town. It kind of leads into the next part of this, which is if speed and pressure to perform and to put dishes out and to get seats turned and, you know, guessed in and out of the, out of the restaurant, if you were concerned about simply performing because you are inundated with customers,
“which happens at these events, maybe that's why, maybe it goes unseen, something gets, you know,”
literally swept under the rug per se. And to me, that's even more indicative of how important it is
To have that leadership, and to have that culture, and to have those SOPs, be...
perform when you're, you know, rocking and rolling, when can you, you're in the business to be busy,
“and when you're busy, you should be well-oiled and moving smoothly, and all of these things should”
be part of your, you know, your daily procedure, your workflow. I would agree, what I mentioned earlier, you know, about like the orchestra, the way that these, these establishments operate, right, is, is unicated. You want to be busy, you want to be humming along, you want to be in the weeds, right, in turning tables, and cranking food out. When you see things happening that are rushed, and that would probably be a little concerning from my perspective, because then maybe they
aren't adequately staffed for, for whatever reason, or the people that are working there aren't adequately trained, and they were, you know, they were just kind of thrown into, into a very challenging situation, which I'm sure right with your background, just as, as much as, is every, every job I'd ever had, you kind of thrown right into the fire, oftentimes, you know, that can be, that can be very, very challenging to your point, right, that can lead to process breakdowns. People might not
follow an SOP, or a procedure, or a process properly. Really, like, if you try to crack open why, why is that happening, maybe they weren't trained properly, right? Maybe they, you know, they were running late, or someone, you know, someone else, you know, didn't, didn't show up for work, and, you know, they're covering, you know, do stations instead of, you know, they're normal one, or they're like, they're cables of doubles. In that, that, right, there can be, there can be
opportunities to, to both, you know, have things, unfortunate things occur, but there's also opportunities to, to, to work through in how you can mitigate those things from happening in the future, or plan to, if they do happen in the future, how can we react better, people being able to, to not get in a, to listen, sort of mindset that, you know, what yesterday was yesterday, we got through it, did we learn anything? Yeah, no, we didn't learn anything, but there's,
there's always going to be things that, that you can learn, and, and act upon to make things better,
right, in having a sort of a mindset of continuous improvement and self-awareness, rather than putting, you know, whether it's your team, your establishment into this, this mindset of, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't seek to tell, you know, everything's fine, but it really isn't. Well, you know, if we, if we take an airplane view of this, right, let's go up 30,000 feet, and we look at the food industry landscape, and, you know, restaurants and eateries come and go,
and a lot of times they go because they're not doing the right work, either they're overcharging, their food isn't good or they're dirty, and, and all these things are relative. So, you know,
and there's a mentality out there, I've seen it in my life where, hey, we've always done it this way,
and nobody's gotten sick, or hey, we've always done it this way, we don't have to improve, and, and frankly, a lot of those businesses go ahead of business, and it's because of being
“short-sighted on, on important topics like this. And for me personally, I think that food safety is,”
is the, okay, well, let me say it like this, equally, food safety is equally important as whatever food products you're putting out to your guests, obviously, like you're going out to eat, to go out to eat, and that's your driver. But the truth is, you, you want everything to be clean and safe, and you want to know that the people who are working there, the personnel, are doing the right things, and, and, and, and, and just to reiterate something, what we're doing
with this, um, you know, inside food safety segment, this is to bring awareness to it, because, you know, listen, there may be somebody who's, uh, intending on opening up a restaurant, they hear this, and all of a sudden it's something that wasn't on the front of their mind and now it is. So, what we're doing is a service, and it's a service to existing, uh, eateries and eateries that
“will be coming online. It's a thing, man. I mean, I believe that. How about you?”
I, I do. You know, let me, let me just, like, something you said, I want to, I want to,
I want to focus on, and it's this, this mindset of, we've always done it this...
And, and one, I guess, piece of advice, right, to, you know, to people that are looking to
break into this or, or get involved, um, open an establishment, that is, I would say, one of the most toxic mind sets you could ever have, because it is just going to instill a complacency in, in, whether it's one thing that you're doing, what's going to happen is it's going to reach into many, many, many, many, many other things. In my opinion, it, it's really quite toxic. And the, the more that you can, main aim that, you know, the fire, the, and the desire, you know,
to, you know, be perfect, or seek perfection, maybe, right, perfection really doesn't exist,
but seek it right and push for it. And whether that's in setting a table, or it's properly, you know,
cooking a hamburger on a flat-knop griddle, actually, you're, you're rolled to the best of your ability
“and do it well and do it every time. That's how you're doing a main team, good, good environment,”
a good atmosphere, high quality products and reading customers. Well said, there's a segue here, and, you know, walking talk media, we do a lot of work with the brunch chef project. And what they do is they bring awareness, not just awareness, but they actually have, quote-unquote, boots on the ground to assist people in the industry who are, you know, reaching burnout or substance abuse, stuff like that mental health, I think is pivotal in this because it's not something
in the front burner per se, but in the back burner because if you have staff that are reaching burnout, then they're not paying attention. When it comes to, you know, your SOPs, your procedures for making sure things are safe, clean and whatnot. I agree a thousand percent, and I was not
“aware, like, that earth chef that sounds amazing. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to”
check that out. It's industry is hard. There's no, there's no doubt about it. Like, you absolutely do get burned out, whether it's your, you're working in restaurants, you're working in a food manufacturing establishment, you're working in a managed food service staff, you know, establishment, you know, hours are long, right? And, you know, the days are long, and everything stacks up, then you get busy. Everything's getting to, you know, layer on top of itself. It's a
challenge being able to trust the people that you work with, and rely on them only goes so far, right? Like, you also need to to try to, you know, look out for those burp for your bill workers, right? Like, and maybe, maybe this is something that, or is coming out of like that, that program, the burnt chef program, like, what are some indicators, right? Did somebody is starting to maybe feel overwhelmed or, or suffer from burnout? Because that's another one of those,
those opportunities that, like, to some degree of continuous improvement. It's not just seeing your food, right? It's in your people. It's in your, it's in your coworkers. It's in your peers. You've got to take care of them because they're going to take care of you. And when you take care of each other, you can, you can help execute and take care of your customer to the best of
all of your abilities. It's just amazing to me, most roads. If not all roads within the food industry,
cross through food safety. And what I mean by that is, yeah, the burnt chef project. Obviously, they're, they exist in order to help people who are, again, either substance abuse, overwork, burnout, all of these things that cause mental, mental distress. And if people aren't on the top of their game, meaning staff, if people aren't focused on what the jobs and tasks are and what those responsibilities are, not just, you know, plating and the cooking, but the cleaning and keeping
people safe. Well, if you're, if you're not at 100%, when you walk in the building to do your job, what makes anyone think that, you know, cleaning is going to be part of that. And what, you know, the execution probably won't be there. It's so important. It's like it's a major thing.
“I don't know. It is. At a macro level, you know, I think there are areas of opportunity where”
the industry in technology are starting to become blended, where technology is, you know, some of the technology available today is it's alleviating some of these like annoying, routine mundane asks that nobody, frankly, nobody in culinary world likes doing, like writing down
Refrigeration temperatures a couple times a day and, you know, being able to ...
those responsibilities away from people, you know, that's a way to invest in your people, right? Kind of a way to show that show somebody like, listen, I value your time and I value you and your efforts and what you do here. Like what if we explore, you know, something like automated kind of termining equipment. So none of us have to write down refrigeration temperature. You know what? Let me tell you something in the spirit of beating the drum. One of the things that
“we're going to talk about, I think on every segment, is how common improper thermometer use is”
within the kitchen. I mean, it's something as silly as that. But again, we're not going to say at one time in one segment and then leave it there. These are things that, you know, in order for us to make a dent in the ears of the listeners, the audience who are from this industry, you got it. We will be repetitive with it. It's really the tools. We have to leverage the tools. And that's where I want to bring up test out. Test out has a lot of the stuff I was with, air in at the NRA.
And you know, it's just there's so many things pieces of equipment and softwares and things that can literally take the onus away from staff. Obviously, they need to be there to implement. But ultimately, we can make things happen in a way that's more expedited and efficient.
I'll be on. I always like to throw in there. You can eat and potentially save yourself,
draw money as well as from a catastrophic loss of inventory. Whether it's a handheld thermometer, right, which, you know, knowing how to use that properly, right, like, you know, you would indicate it's a routine, you know, in the industry, the people misuse those. And that's as simple as it is, is what kind of training and education is there available to teach somebody a lot of properly take the temperature of a chicken breast. It's not rocket science, but there is some science involved,
right, like you want to check the the biggest part of the breast and let the the temperature stabilize and using digital equipment right digital thermometers over the older, you know, generation by metallic stem thermometers, it's, it's leaps and bounds higher quality information and you get it faster. You can drop a digital thermometer on the on the floor for six feet
and it'll still function as it's as it's designed. After your life, it's always to watch
“Chan sanitize. All right, you drop a blinded colleague stem thermometer on the floor. You have to recalibrate it and then”
you know, like you, you've got to go through this process. Technically, like you really, because they don't, they'll get knocked out of calibration. Like in that, that's, that's just an example, right, of the misused, right, and how, and how common they are. Well, somebody might be misguided overlooking food on a routine basis. And that could be the laws of why, right, they're using abymecalic stem thermometers. They've dropped it 50 times. They've never recalibrated it. They've
never checked it in an ice water bath for accuracy and they don't even know how to calibrate it.
Which typically they're quite easy, but taking the time to understand, like there's a process, like that's a process breakdown. And what could we do, right, what could we maybe invest a little bit of money in to eliminate that? And, you know, a possible answer is, you know, a fast-read digital digital thromber. We make a couple of really, really slick ones. I've reenwashed my entire family, using them every time we book something. They're really, really fast-effective and efficient,
never impacted. They're talking down with anything I've ever made. Now, grand, I'm not looking at scale, like in a kitchen, you know, but I'll go to the mat with anybody that they would like to prove otherwise. You know, there are tools that are out there that can be integrated into extremely high volume. I stress situations that are going to get you the high quality information. You know, Ease is a data like final cooking temperatures delivered to the people that need to
“to use those as fast as you can click an eye. Well, that's what's pretty amazing about the company.”
You know, Tesla has these systems that are linked up to, you know, apps and, yeah, I mean, it's really incredible that you can actually monitor all of these, you know, pressure points and, you know, critical control points. When it comes to temperatures in your cooler or, you know,
Something that, you know, you're recording the temps of your stakes from for ...
it's pretty amazing. And, you know, we're living in a really interesting age of technology that
“can really set you apart from the competition because listen, I go out to eat all the time. Obviously,”
I'm in this space, right? There are certain types of eateries that I don't go to because I know I stand a better chance of not having a good meal. I know the food might be terrific, but I genuinely I do want the SOPs. I do want people taking food safety seriously and believe me, I've been in plenty of establishments that were called at straight shady. You know, I'm still here to talk about it. It's fine. But at the end of the day, I don't, I really, you know, the older
I get, the, the, the, the more I want of that, the more I want of of of food safety at large. I am totally fine with paying for for quality. The experience that, you know, a quality establishment provides, you're customer to depend on that. They are putting their their faith
“in you as the establishment owner manager, who like executive chef, server, solier, bartender,”
what, you know, fill in the, fill in the position and putting your they're trusting you with it,
you know, the food that they consume is going to be safe, also in pace amazing. Eric, you know,
look, man, there's got to be one, I mean, I'm sure there's many, but there's got to be one operational change or restaurant can implement right now that would significantly improve food safety. What is that automated, stationary temperature monitoring? 24/7, 365 coverage, the systems allow you to have alerts back to your cell phone and or your email address. If there's an, an equipment malfunction, really, really helpful. In case there's some sort of malfunction breakdown, save inventory,
and also you can, you can optimize your energy consumption, lower your electric bills. So that is,
in my mind, the, it is the easiest thing to do to, to, to really help a, in the establishment,
very, very quickly in figuring things out. Right. And then you have the right people, meaning leadership would, I presumably be the ones receiving these emails and notifications. So that's like the buck stops right there exactly, right? And, you know, then you can, you can, you can make change, right? You can, you can, you can shut a refrigerator down. You can relocate all the, all the product, right? Like, people have a lot of money tied up in, in refrigerators and freezers,
and if one of those goes down, I mean, that can, that can, like, ruin your week, your month, your year. So being able to, you know, maintain that investment, that's a big deal in my mind. I think you're saying all the right stuff. And I feel like on our next segment, I think we should dive into that piece of equipment just a little bit more. And, uh, and I, I feel like people are going to want to know about it. I'm just saying,
how does somebody find or follow, test out? So Instagram, that's still going to make America a little come right up.
“If you want to learn more about me or reach out, you have questions, you want to chat, whatever.”
He's just ways maintain, and I know you still have a lot of shows coming up that you're going to be attending. So safe travels to you, Eric. I'm looking forward to next month on the next segment. Have a, uh, have a delicious, delicious time between now and then sir. All right, cheers. You two, go. Thanks for your time. We are out. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point
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