Food Safety In Catering Kitchen: Challenges And Solutions For The Hospitality Sector

Challenges in Maintaining Food Safety Standards

Discuss about the Food Safety and the Food Hygiene Studies.

Modern people are facing food born disease due to high intake of fast food from outsides. Poor knowledge in hygienic food preparation leads the restaurants and hotel to face legal challenges (Dudeja et al. 2016). In the recent years, unhygienic food preparation is the big issue of the restaurant sectors. However, the customer number becomes decreased due to lack of food safety in the hotels and restaurants (Hiltoncolombo1.Com 2018). At present the restaurant sectors have been facing issue to retain the customers due to lack of food safety in their catering kitchen. However, the staffs have poor knowledge about hygiene and they often fail to prepare the food in a hygienic way. This hampers the brand image and the customer loyalty of such sector. This current study deals with the food safety issues and its solution in the catering kitchen.

• To understand the current food safety issue in restaurant and hotels
• To reveal the policies and strategies to improve the food safety in catering kitchen
• To recommend the way to develop a better food safety in the restaurant and hotels

For every catering kitchen it is important to manage the food safety standard.  This is the key for restaurants and hotel to prevent food poisoning and ensure that the prepared food is safe to eat. According to the theory of planned behavior food poisoning depends on the consumer’s food handling behavior (Ababio et al. 2015). The efficacy of food hygiene intervention is associated with the planned behavior. Hence, it is crucial for the consumers to increase their awareness regarding the hygiene and food safety standard of the restaurants. For example, restaurant sector needs to manage the food safety standard in their catering kitchen. This can be done by following the legal norms and developing new policies. At present consumption of the safe food is a basic issue of the consumer as well as for the restaurants (Bai et al. 2018). It is important for hospitality sectors to develop hygienic cooking and storage of the foods by their staffs. Hygienic failure, cross contamination and errors in food handling hamper the food safety standard of such restaurant, which need to overcome.

The 5C analysis will lead the restaurant sector to understand its external environment. Analysis of the company shows that Hospitality Sector aims to provide safe and hygienic food to its customers by improving their staff knowledge. Therefore, they have huge number of customers and their market size is high in Srilanka (Harris et al. 2015). Their major competitors are Agra restaurant and Palmyrah restaurant that give a challenge to the other restaurant sectors. These two organizations have implemented safety policies to train their staffs. As a result, there is a high competition for other organizations which leads them to improve their food safety standard. The collaborators of this sectors include external agencies that comes for an inspection to measure the food safety standard. Hence, the hospitality sector needs to comply with this audit agency to improve its food safety standard. Hence, the climate analysis shows that Restaurant Sector needs to incorporate new technology to improve its food standard.

Solutions for Improving Food Safety Standards

Porter five forces analysis

Five forces	Analysis in the context of Restaurant Sector
Buyer’s bargaining power	Buyer’s bargaining power is high as they try to buy high quality food at low price. Hospitality sector has savvy customers, which leads the customers to search a better quality restaurant via online.
Supplier’s bargaining power	The bargaining power of the supplier is low. The restaurants have more staffs thus, the supplier power is low.
Threat of substitute	Threat of substitute is high as many competitors in hospitality sector offer high standard food safety. This hampers the growth of other organizations.
Barriers to entry	Barriers to entry are high. Restaurant Sector is a vital economic sector thus they have gained good position in the market, which resist the new entrants (Hiltoncolombo1.Com 2018).
The rivalry	Palmyrah restaurant and Agra restaurant are the major rivals of srilanka’s hospitality industry. They offer high quality food service along with ensuring safety, which creates a big threat for  other restaurant Sectors

Table 1: Porter Five Forces analysis

(Source: Allata et al. 2017)

S-Strength Strong brand recognition Huge number of staff	W-weakness Lack of knowledge among the staffs to develop food safety standard Lack of well trained staffs
O-Opportunity To incorporate new policy in improving food safety standard	T-Threat Huge competition in the market

Table 2: SWOT analysis

(Source: Rebouças et al. 2017)

From the above environmental analysis it has been received that lack of proper knowledge of the staffs leads the restaurant sector to maintain food safety standard in their organization. Therefore, huge competition and substitute products bring threats for this organization (Rebouças et al. 2017). On the other hand, this sector can improve their food safety standard by providing training to the staffs as they have large number of staffs.

In this current report secondary data collection method has been selected to collect data. Secondary data collection method is effective to gather authentic data (Allata et al. 2017). However, inclusion and exclusion criteria have been used to select journal articles from the databases. Therefore, positivism philosophy, deductive approach and descriptive design have been selected to conduct research methodology.

Food safety issue is major issue in the global restaurant industry. It has been received that in the year 1990 to 2005 the food safety issue was low (Dupuis et al. 2016). The Health Statistics Report 2011, which is published by Ministry of Health and Quality Life shows that from the year 2005 to 2015 the food poisoning cases became increased (da CUNHA et al. 2016). In Srilanka, many restaurants have faced food poisoning cases due to error in the food preparation, which affects the brand image and customer number of the restaurants. In order to deal with these issues the hospitality sectors of Srilanka follow the Food Act 2006. Therefore, the food industry in each country needs to follow the WHO food safety standard and international food safety policy to reduce food born risk in their catering kitchen.

Figure 1: Statistical data of Food poisoning in World

(Source: Dupuis et al. 2016)

Figure 1: Food Safety and Standard Act

(Source: da CUNHA et al. 2016)

Figure 3: Food Safety management process

(Source: Dupuis et al. 2016)

• In order to improve the food safety standard in catering kitchen the restaurant sector needs to implement good hygiene practice in their organization. This includes pest control, waste management, staff training, stock control and good structural finishes. This will improve the food safety standard in the catering kitchen by reducing food contamination.
• The staffs if catering kitchen need to comply with the Food Safety Act and Food safety policy by incorporating staff training. By implementing hazard analysis and critical control policy (HACCP) hospitality sector will be able to improve their food safety standard.
• Restaurant sector needs to ensure the supply chain compliance with the food safety principles. Therefore, by incorporating technology such using digital effort they can teach their staffs. This will help them to improve their knowledge in hygiene and health.

Conclusion

The above study focuses on the food safety management issue in the context of hospitality sector. It has been received that poor knowledge of the staffs is the major weakness of this organization. Incorporation of food safety policy and hygienic practice will be effective to improve the food safety standard in catering kitchen. Hence, it can be concluded that compliance with the food safety legislation is important to ensure quality of the food in the restaurants.

References

Ababio, Patricia Foriwaa, and Pauline Lovatt. “A review on food safety and food hygiene studies in Ghana.” Food Control 47 (2015): 92-97.

Allata, S., A. Valero, and L. Benhadja. “Implementation of traceability and food safety systems (HACCP) under the ISO 22000: 2005 standard in North Africa: The case study of an ice cream company in Algeria.” Food Control 79 (2017): 239-253.

Bai, Li, Mingliang Wang, Yinsheng Yang, and Shunlong Gong. “Food safety in restaurants: The consumer perspective.” International Journal of Hospitality management (2018).

da CUNHA, DIOGO THIMOTEO, VERIDIANA VERA de ROSSO, and Elke Stedefeldt. “Should weights and risk categories be used for inspection scores to evaluate food safety in restaurants?.” Journal of food protection 79, no. 3 (2016): 501-506.

Dudeja, Puja, Rajul K. Gupta, and Amarjeet Singh Minhas, eds. Food Safety in the 21st Century: Public Health Perspective. Academic Press, 2016.

Dupuis, Roxanne, Zachary Meisel, David Grande, Emily Strupp, Sarah Kounaves, Amy Graves, Rosemary Frasso, and Carolyn C. Cannuscio. “Food allergy management among restaurant workers in a large US city.” Food Control 63 (2016): 147-157.

Harris, Kimberly J., Kevin S. Murphy, Robin B. DiPietro, and Gretchen L. Rivera. “Food safety inspections results: A comparison of ethnic-operated restaurants to non-ethnic-operated restaurants.” International Journal of Hospitality management 46 (2015): 190-199.

Hiltoncolombo1.Com 2018. “Restaurant Sector”. 2018. Hiltoncolombo1.Com. https://www.hiltoncolombo1.com/GrazeKitchen. (Accessed July 4)

Rebouças, Larissa Tannus, Lidiane Barbosa Santiago, Larissa Silva Martins, Ana Cláudia Rios Menezes, Maria da Purificação Nazaré Araújo, and Rogeria Comastri de Castro Almeida. “Food safety knowledge and practices of food handlers, head chefs and managers in hotels’ restaurants of Salvador, Brazil.” Food Control 73 (2017): 372-381.