The COVID-19 pandemic was the start of an influx of challenges for food retail and restaurant establishments, with lingering effects leading to labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and inflationary pressures. This operational shift has forced these establishments to reassess current food safety standards and procedures and adjust where needed.

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 600 million people fall ill after consuming contaminated food every year. A single outbreak can cost a restaurant business upwards of two million dollars according to a 2018 study published in Public Health Reports and, with at least 31 different types of foodborne pathogens to worry about, food safety protocols should be at the top of every priority list for restaurant establishments.

To better protect customers, employees and restaurant owners and operators need to have confidence in their food safety programs. A proper food safety program doesn’t just “pass the test.” A solid food safety program ensures proper food safety practices happen every day, focuses on high-risk issues, and has buy-in from all employee levels, including from senior leadership.

To achieve this, restaurant owners and managers should be able to answer “yes” to the following three questions:

1. Is Food Safety Practiced Consistently?

According to Steritech assessment data, restaurant brands consistently experience a higher number of food safety issues on particular days of the week. The specific days of the week vary by brand, but virtually all brands have at least one day of the week when their issue count is consistently and significantly higher.

The data revealed that the location’s worst day often corresponded with the days when more personnel were present. This indicates that the issue is not always caused by a labor gap, but a leadership gap. The common factor seems to be that leadership is focused on something other than food prep on certain days: delivery days, inventory shifts, manager meetings or other tasks. It also correlates to the experience level of the leadership present; for example, issue counts often rise on the general manager’s regular day off.

The difference between a restaurant’s best day of the week and their worst day is typically between 12% and 18%, but for some brands, that variance is more than 30%. Restaurant owners and managers need to recognize and pay close attention to those “opportunity days” to ensure that proper and consistent food safety practices are being executed at every shift.

2. Is There a Plan in Place to Handle High-Risk Activities?

High-risk activities will be different for every establishment, but it’s likely that every brand has a few. Being able to identify which activities have the strongest links to foodborne illness for a particular restaurant is the first step toward handling those concerns. Some common high-risk activities include, but are not limited to:

• Cooling, reheating, and hot and cold handling;
• Cross-contamination during storage and handling practices;
• Cleaning, sanitizing, and handwashing; and
• Date marking and timely disposal of expired products.

Once a restaurant’s specific high-risk activities have been identified, the next step should be to implement documented food safety management systems for each critical process. A documented food safety management system should cover three parts: the procedures for each critical risk, the training to implement those procedures, and defined monitoring of the implemented procedures.

At first, creating a food safety management plan for each critical issue may appear to be a daunting task, but it’s a task that will better protect employees, customers, and the restaurant. When creating this food safety plan, take it one step at a time. Start with a task that will generate immediate success to get the ball rolling, and then use that positive momentum to further expand the plan.

3. Do Leadership and Management Understand Food Safety Protocols?

Building an effective restaurant food safety program requires engagement and buy-in from all stakeholders. Recent FDA studies found approximately 60% fewer critical issues cited when the person in charge could knowledgeably discuss their food safety management systems.

When food safety programs focus exclusively on location-level employees, the senior leadership team is left out of a crucial part of business operations. In successful organizations, senior company leaders drive processes and programs that keep the entire organization continuously improving.

Food retail and restaurant operators should train leadership and management teams to support food safety programs by practicing “S.A.F.E.” measures.

• Say: What managers say can provide vital reminders to keep food safety in everyone’s awareness every day. Managers and leaders can take simple food safety reminders a step further by also communicating the “why” behind each job. This will help to reinforce the importance of each task to front-line staff.
• Act: The way managers act is also a critical component of effective food safety programs. What leaders do—or fail to do—sends a message to everyone who sees them about the establishment’s food safety values. Simple actions such as hand washing when an employee enters the kitchen, wearing hair restraints, checking temperature logs, or reviewing recent inspection reports will illustrate the importance of those daily tasks to front-line staff.
• Feedback: Leaders are also responsible for being receptive to feedback from those they lead, but this is often overlooked. When leaders and managers can both provide feedback and be open to receiving feedback from their team members, it opens the door to positive two-way communication, which also helps foster a self-sustaining culture of food safety.
• Encourage: There is great power in encouraging positive behaviors. Traditional food safety programs typically focus on the bad findings. Instead, use positive recognition to reinforce good behaviors and send the message that excellent food safety will be rewarded. Positive recognition boosts morale and creates pride, which ultimately embeds itself into the culture. It also creates a platform for employees to receive constructive feedback when it becomes necessary.

Whether managing a single, family-owned restaurant, or a multi-location franchise establishment, creating a positive food safety culture is essential. In this new era of limited staff, high turnover rates, consistent supply chain demands and various other challenges impeding the restaurant industry, owners and operators certainly have a tough job ahead.

A system of strong procedures, training, and monitoring can ensure consistent food safety every day. Pair this with S.A.F.E. food safety practices by leadership at all levels to help build a solid food safety culture for everyone involved.

Boyles is vice president of food safety at Steritech.

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The COVID-19 pandemic that has kept people at home and curtailed restaurant visits accentuated a trend for so-called “ghost kitchens.” Ghost kitchens, also known as virtual kitchens or dark kitchens, do not have a storefront or dining area, but instead rely on customer pick-up or delivery services. Their popularity boomed during the pandemic, as consumers opted for delivered meals and some restaurateurs expanded or started up inexpensively in small spaces with low overhead.

The term “ghost kitchen” was first used in a 2015 investigative report referring to several operations operating below regulatory standards, some illegally, in New York City, according to Francine Shaw, CEO of Savvy Food Safety Inc., a Hagerstown, Md.-based food safety consultancy. The phrase has evolved to mean a delivery- or pickup-only restaurant. These facilities take a variety of forms, with the simplest having one location with one or more restaurants under the same roof, sometimes sharing equipment and space. In many cases, independent kitchens are the result of major restaurant brands, such as The Halal Guys, taking their delivery and catering services offsite, according to King & Spalding, a New York-based law firm.

Commissary ghost kitchens, the most common arrangement, feature multiple ghost kitchens sharing kitchen space that could be owned and operated by third parties. A newer trend is to have a ghost kitchen operate within a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The ghost kitchen uses the same staff and equipment as the restaurant but offers food from a national brand for delivery only. One example is Combo Kitchen, a Miami-based franchise that partners with large chains so that they can expand inexpensively in a small kitchen on the premises of a different established restaurant.

The Industry Takes Off

In 2020, the United States had approximately 1,500 ghost kitchens. Their numbers continue to grow as restaurants adapt to less expensive ways to operate and respond to changing consumer demand, says Shaw. “They are much less labor-intensive,” she says. While a typical brick-and-mortar restaurant might process 15 to 20 delivery orders per hour, a ghost kitchen may process 60 or more with a single employee. They’re also a less expensive way to open a “restaurant” because they don’t require the added dining space and decor.

Food deliveries increased dramatically during the pandemic, changing the nature of the restaurant industry, with delivery orders increasing almost 70% in March 2020 over the same month in the previous year, while restaurant traffic declined 22%, according to NPD Group.

Brett Buterick, counsel with the franchise and hospitality group at A.Y. Strauss in Roseland, N.J., agrees. The law firm is one of several that has found a new business around the proliferation of ghost kitchens, advising franchise restaurant brands about federal and state regulations. “The pandemic left a big impact on the restaurant industry and accelerated the growing trend of ghost kitchens,” he says. That has benefited many restaurants because they can expand with little cost, and a franchisee can get into the restaurant business at a low cost.

Regulation

Ghost kitchens and brick-and-mortar restaurants are regulated in the same way, Shaw says. FDA regulates some ghost kitchens that could be defined as “food facilities,” which manufacture, process, pack, or hold food for consumption. But the agency does not regulate facilities that prepare and sell food to consumers for immediate consumption, such as most restaurants and ghost kitchens. Those are subject to the same state and local food quality and safety regulations and oversight as eat-in or quick-service restaurants, including allergy management and hazard planning.

Because of their secretive nature away from the public eye, public health and other officials question whether the largely virtual operations are meeting sanitation standards. There’s also little information available to consumers to assess whether the food they are ordering is safe to eat, as ghost kitchens typically do not post ratings from health officials on their doors or websites, leaving reviews up to crowd-sourced platforms like Yelp.

The growth of ghost kitchens has New York City and other cities looking into their practices. That includes the New York City Council’s Committee on Small Business, which has floated three bills related to regulating ghost kitchens, says Reginald Johnson, chief of staff for Bronx councilmember Mark Gjonaj, who heads the committee. One would require the city’s letter grades to be posted where customers interact with the ghost kitchen, whether online or at a pickup location, Johnson adds. The council also wants clarification from city administrators about how the kitchens are inspected, so health issues can be traced. “If they have several different restaurants operating in the same space, is there one grade for the entire operation or does each individual kitchen get a separate grade?” Johnson says.

Hossein Kasmai, CEO of Combo Kitchen, says that his business model helps solve this issue. The company operates 50 locations in 20 states, partnering with brand-name restaurant chains to license their food and menu in a ghost kitchen operation that runs within various brick-and-mortar restaurants. The physical restaurant can leverage its staff and equipment with the new business from the ghost kitchen, while the virtual kitchen has a low-overhead operation within an existing restaurant, he says. That also unites the inspection and food safety activities because both operations use the same staff, premises, and equipment.

He adds that Combo Kitchen also inspects each location to protect the quality and reputation of the brand-name restaurant chains. “We use recognized brands with an established reputation so we can ensure the quality,” Kasmai says. “And there are regular inspections.”

Many of the independent or shared ghost kitchens are smaller than typical restaurant kitchens, however, and thus require special planning for workflow to avoid contamination, such as keeping raw and cooked food separate, says Paula Herald, PhD, technical consultant for Steritech Group Inc., a food safety assessment company based in Charlotte, N.C. She says that some states allow shared kitchens among several ghost kitchens in the same building, while others don’t, and it’s important for those setting up a kitchen to verify regulations with local inspectors. “Some states require a shared kitchen to have a totally independent water heater, their own walk-in cooler, and their own three-compartment sink to prevent an outbreak of foodborne illness,” she adds.

Dr. Herald says it’s important to guard against cross contamination, especially when it comes to food allergens. She advises ghost kitchens to work with local health inspectors to learn what they can and cannot share, avoid short cuts, and incorporate food safety practices into the work environment. She also recommends that those starting ghost kitchens have contracts with delivery services that assure the cleanliness of vehicles, employ low-touch food transfers, and keep records of when the food leaves a restaurant and when it’s delivered.

While Shaw says she doesn’t expect restaurants as we traditionally know them to go away any time soon, one thing is for certain: Ghost kitchens offer convenience to the consumer, and they’re likely here to stay.

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