Food and Alcohol Safety Training
5605 Manor Drive Peekskill, New York 10556
Food and Alcohol Safety “Knowledge” – More Business, Better Jobs, Bigger Tips?
Whether you are a restaurant owner or an employee of a restaurant rest assured that your livelihood is dependent on food and alcohol safety knowledge. You may be asking yourself why, what’s the big deal?
It is very simple; we live in a world where everything and anything becomes information available to everyone in a matter of moments. The waiter that sneezes into his hands, then does does not wash his hands, or the waitress that wiped down the counter and left the dirty rag laying on the counter, the container of lemons left uncovered in the reach-in underneath the blower that’s dripping, the busboy sorting silverware with his bare hands and handling the silverware at the wrong end. These and more were just some of the things I noticed while recently sitting at the counter in a local diner and having breakfast. There are many people who upon witnessing the above would immediately log into their accounts at Yelp, Zagat, Chow Hound, etcetera, and fire off these details with some colorful commentary that I’m sure would make a grown restaurant owner weep.
Add FaceBook, Twitter, Square, etcetera and a restaurant or bar can fill up one moment then be shut down the next. Serving alcohol to underage individuals, serving intoxicated patrons or scraping off the mold from the dinner rolls is a guarantee to disaster. Not only can the local health departments, the police and the courts take action against a business and its owners but quite often a server can be held criminally and personally responsible if their actions led to personal, property and/or third party liability or criminal claims.
While the trend in the industry which is being set by the big national chains and local municipalities is to require training where there has been none and to require more training and or certification where exists some, individual operators/owners and individual chefs, cooks, managers, servers, bartenders need not wait for a mandate. You can be proactive, get ahead of the curve. There are a plethora of training opportunities and nationally recognized certifications available as online training and exams or instructor led live classroom courses. Most course offerings take anywhere from a couple of hours to one full day to complete. Pricing ranges from $8.95 to $399.00 depending on the course. Consider it as an investment or an insurance policy when you figure that a lawsuit could skyrocket into the millions.
In addition to using the knowledge to prevent a disaster you can also use it to foster your career advancement or enhance your business image. Look at any job board or classified section. Many positions in the hospitality industry require an individual to be ServSafe certified (ServSafe is just one of a number of nationally accepted certifications and over the years has become the “Coca Cola” of the industry). Today savvy business owners are touting their staff’s training and use it as a marketing tool.
Any restaurant today that incorporates food and alcohol safety training as a part of their operations SOP’s is definitely going to reap the rewards by doing more business. More business means more profits for the owners and more tips for their staff.
Michael Pozit is President of Food and Alcohol Safety Class. FnaSafety.com offers training and certification nationwide via online courses and instructor led classes. He travels across the country on behalf of many national companies and government agencies conducting training sessions and seminars. He can be reached at mikep@fnasafety.com or (888)-510-0404
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