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A lot of people dream of owning their own business one day. For some, it’s the dream of a tech startup. Others dream about opening their own restaurant one day.
If you’re in that second group, you’ll join in the ranks of approximately one million other restaurants across the country. While restaurants vary dramatically in terms of the foods they serve and the customers they target, they all share in the necessity of maintaining food safety.
If you’re thoughts about opening a restaurant focused more on the atmosphere and clientele, you may wonder why food safety in restaurants matters so much. Keep reading for some of the key reasons it matters for you.
Staying Open
Like many other industries, restaurants get inspected periodically and often without any kind of notice. Granted, most public health inspectors don’t go out with the intention of closing down every restaurant they inspect. Most inspectors will cite a restaurant for infractions and give you a chance to fix problems that crop up.
That is not, however, a guarantee. If your restaurant has too many problems or repeated problems, there is a very good chance that you’ll get shut down by the inspector. Once you get shut down, it can prove very difficult to reopen your restaurant.
Careful food handling procedures are the easiest way to stay open.
Keeping Customers Healthy
One of the biggest reasons that restaurant food safety matters so much is that it helps keep your customers healthy. Improper food safety can cause foodborne illnesses.
If you’re very lucky, those foodborne illnesses will mostly consist of digestive problems. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.
Poor food safety practices can also cause much more serious infections that leave people hospitalized or, in very extreme cases, even cause deaths.
Avoiding Bad Word of Mouth
Making any customer sick, no matter how unintentionally, is bad for business. A big part of the problem is that customers who get sick generally won’t let you know. That means you never get a chance to make it right with them.
Instead, they’ll leave bad reviews for the restaurant online which creates negative digital word of mouth. They’ll also steer people away from the restaurant by telling their friends and family that your food made them sick.
That negative word of mouth can make life very hard in neighborhood restaurants or restaurants that offer high-end cuisine.
Maintaining Food Safety in Your Restaurant
There are a number of good reasons that maintaining food safety in your place matters. The biggest reason from a public health perspective is that you don’t people in your community sick. From a business perspective, good food safety helps you avoid trouble with health inspectors and bad word of mouth.
The best way you can support food safety in your restaurant is with good food safety training. Make every new employee go through the training and every employee retake it periodically.
Looking for more tips on good business practices? Check out our Business section.
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