When you run a professional kitchen, it is usually the heart and soul of the business itself. That is true whether you are in charge of a restaurant, a company that creates food to sell in supermarkets, a catering business, or anything else related to food. The better the kitchen is run, the better the business is going to fare on the whole. Because of this, it’s really important that your commercial kitchen is run as professionally as possible, because that way the whole business benefits – and so do the customers.
In this post, we are going to take a look at what it really means to run a kitchen professionally. As long as you take on board some of the following aspects, you are much more likely to find that your kitchen is being run properly, and that you can therefore expect the best out of it. Let’s take a look and see what this might all entail.
Keeping Everything Sanitized
One of the most centrally important things in running any kitchen in a professional business is ensuring that everything is being dealt with cleanly. Sanitization is often the difference between a commercial kitchen that everyone can trust, and one which you are going to find is not quite working out right. Because of this, you need to know how to keep everything sanitized, and then make sure that you are doing so as well as possible at all times.
One way to ensure this is to have rules in place about how often everything gets cleaned. Really you should be cleaning your kitchen as you go along, and that’s something that you will want to drill into your staff as much as you can. But you should also deep clean at the end of each day, and then once a week at least do an even deeper clean of all the various parts of the kitchen too.
Bear in mind that there are certain parts of the kitchen which are going to require more cleaning more often, because they just collect a lot of dirt or grime. A good example is the hood of the oven areas. These will collect a lot of grime and you need to make sure that you are calling in the Expert Commercial Hood Cleaning services to ensure that it is dealt with as it needs to be. As long as you attend to these specific areas, you are going to find keeping your kitchen cleaner is a lot easier.
Keeping a clean kitchen will ensure that you are not preparing food which is unsavory, and it will help you to avoid harming any of your customers – or staff members. Remember that with a food business, you might get a food safety check at any moment, so it’s something that you are going to want to think about for this reason too, as otherwise you might land yourself in some serious trouble. With sanitization being taken care of, you are free to look at the other remaining elements of running a commercial kitchen professionally.
Fire Safety Rules
There are other rules which you need to attend to too, and one of the most important is fire safety rules. Of course, if you are not careful, a kitchen is exactly the kind of room where it is possible to start a fire, so it’s vital that you are doing everything in your power to make this as least likely as possible. That means being aware of the laws around fire safety regulations and following them to the letter, as this is going to ensure that your kitchen is much less likely to be the victim of a fire at any point.
That includes having fire extinguishers and fire blankets that are in use, in the right place, and which work. It also means regular fire safety training for all members of staff who work in the kitchen at all, from the head chef right down to the cleaners and porters. You need to ensure that you are able to prove you are training people up as necessary in this way, as a legal requirement.
Beyond that, you should also focus on good practice while cooking, as there are obviously safer ways of cooking which all chefs should be sure to make use of every day. As the manager, you need to be strict about anyone who purposefully does anything that is potentially a fire hazard, as this is not behavior that you should put up with in your commercial kitchen at all.
As long as you do all that, you are much less likely to have a fire in your kitchen, and the whole place will be run so much more professionally too.
Cold Chain Management
According to the law, there is a cold chain that needs to be attended to with fresh food, and it is really important for health and safety that you are paying close attention to this as best as you can. What this essentially means is that cold food has to stay cold wherever possible, and should only be kept outside of the refrigerator for a maximum of twenty minutes – until of course you are cooking it into something. The same is true of warm food, and of food that needs to be kept in the freezer. The purpose of these rules is to help slow down the spread of bacteria which might be harmful when consumed, and as you can probably appreciate it’s really important that you are paying attention to this.
Use The Right Equipment For The Right Job
For each and every job that takes place in the kitchen, the right piece of equipment should be used. There are two main reasons for this. One is that it helps with safety, because it means that people are less likely to hurt themselves with those implements and items of equipment. The other is for the sake of the food, and you are more likely to create delicious meals that customers will really love.
