At Bob Evans Restaurants, servers often use a hand sanitizer in addition to frequent hand washing before delivering meals to customers.

Putting HACCP Safety Practices Into Action, Part II Bob Evans, based in Columbus, Ohio, is best known for breakfast, but the chain serves three meals a day. The fare is homestyle American cuisine, such as hamburgers, chicken pot pie, meatloaf and turkey and dressing, in addition to the traditional breakfast fare: sausages, eggs, pancakes and more. The Toledo, Ohio, unit, managed by Ben Peters, serves an average of 8,800 customers a week.

The chain provides all of its operators with a list that details the shelf life of each item in the store. This list is complemented by a sticker system that clearly indicates the date on which a product must be tossed. For example, Bob Evans' chicken noodle casserole has a three-day shelf life. An employee would calculate the three days and put a corresponding label on it so that an employee or manager would know that they must use it by that day or throw it out.

HACCP assessment resulted in a change in Bob Evans' meat purchasing and handling practices. The chain had been using freshly ground beef but then switched to a frozen product in order to have a better handle on the product's safety, quality and consistency. In the cooler, meats are put into bright orange tubs on the bottom rack to thaw to prevent natural juices from dripping down and contaminating other foods.

To facilitate proper personal hygiene, Bob Evans has strategically located hand sinks in key work areas: two out front for the servers; one for the grill cook and kitchen prep staff; and one for the dishwasher. Signs posted at the sinks remind employees to wash their hands. Additionally, the crew uses an extra weapon in the sanitation war: an Ecolab sanitizer, which they use after washing their hands.

Kitchen employees are trained to continually monitor food temperatures throughout preparation and cooking. Managers monitor the effectiveness of the system by checking, for example, that the steam tables hold temperatures between 180°F to 200°F degrees. On the grill line, cooks are short-order specialists so that all food is prepared quickly and to order. This prevents food from sitting out too long and entering the temperature danger zone between 40°F and 140°F where bacteria can grow.

A refrigerated salad unit holds all the ingredients necessary to prepare custom salads to order, such as lettuce, tomato, cheese and dressings. When servers request a specialty salad to be made up, the kitchen employees prepare the item with clean gloved hands and the salads are directly sent to service. Salads are not made ahead of time in order to provide a freshly prepared product and to avoid the possibility of food contamination.

To verify that the system works, all Bob Evans restaurants undergo a "food quality walk" on a monthly basis, to ensure that every single food item is safely prepared and that all equipment is working properly. The inspection follows an 8-page checklist that documents the temperatures on all foods, checks every holding or heating cabinet to make sure they're working properly and tests temperature gauges on the cooler and freezer. This inspection is usually undertaken by a manager and is done in addition to daily temperature and equipment checks.

Peters says that his staff couldn't implement all of his restaurant's food safety handling procedures without proper training. "Training makes employees feel good about the establishment they work in and sends the message that we're committed to serving quality food," he says.

Employees are empowered to make decisions about the food they serve. If something doesn't seem right, they can throw away an item in specially designated buckets. When managers see items in these buckets, they know to ask questions about it and correct whatever problem might have occurred, he says.

This rule also applies to carry-out business, where eggs and pancakes can lose their consistency and heat. Peters and his crew ask customers to estimate their arrival time and try to prep items as close to target as possible. In this way, employees can take ownership and pride in the foods they serve at Bob Evans.

Big John's Hometown Pizza Practices and Advertises Food Safety

John Barnett, owner of Big John's Hometown Pizza, Pendleton, Ore., has been in business a long time. He opened his restaurant in 1962 as part of the Shakey's Pizza Parlor chain and went independent in 1985. As a proud owner, Barnett is very conscious of teaching his employees proper food handling procedures, and doesn't take chances with the safety of his guests or his livelihood.

The 150-seat restaurant serves both lunch and dinner and features a self-serve, all-you-can-eat lunch buffet with items such as tacos, spaghetti, fajitas, soups and dessert items, a salad bar and traditional as well as deep-dish pizza. In order to keep the cold items at the salad bar fresh and at temperature, they are prepared in small batches and then put into inserts in the salad bar. The inserts are kept at approximately 38°F with ice and employees take temperatures a few times a day. Items that need to be kept hot at 140°F or above are regulated by heating elements in the salad bar and those temperatures also are taken on a regular basis. The buffet is open only three hours a day, so whatever items are left at the end of that period are thrown away.

In addition to sneeze guards, the salad bar has an additional security measure: The bartender keeps an eye on the area to make sure people don't return things they have touched into the bins and that children don't play with the food. If either one of these things happens, employees know that they must dump the contents of the bin out and replace it with a fresh container. "You can afford to dump a bin of food much more than you can afford a foodborne illness lawsuit," Barnett reasons.

A major key in serving wholesome food at Big John's is to begin with fresh ingredients. The establishment is located close to a high-quality meat and sausage packing plant that delivers these items in refrigerated trucks. The meats, which include pepperoni and salami, are immediately stored at 34°F in the pizzeria's walk-in cooler. Cheese is purchased in a frozen, shredded form and thawed in the walk-in cooler three days before it's needed.

Despite the freshness of the incoming ingredients, Barnett doesn't like to take any chances. Cured meats, such as pepperoni and salami, are stored in the cooler and put on top of a pizza just before cooking, yet sausage and beef toppings, which Barnett says require special care, are cooked before even touching a pizza. These meats must reach an internal temperature of at least 165°F in the oven before being cooled to 40°F in 30 minutes or less in an ice bath. During the cooking process, employees are careful to stir and move the meats in order to cook them evenly. Temperatures are taken before removing them from the oven, as well as after they are removed from the ice bath.

While traditional flat pizzas cook evenly in the restaurant's brick oven, deep-dish pizza presents a greater challenge because the thick layers of tomato juices and cheese keep heat out of the middle of the pie. To solve this problem, Barnett's employees make a hole in the middle of deep-dish pizzas and then cook them at 500°F for about 20 minutes.

A savvy marketer, Barnett recognizes the public's concern with food safety and advertises the restaurant's dedication to food safety in television and print ads. In one 30-second TV spot, employees are shown slicing foods with gloves on and washing their hands and the International Food Safety Council logo is prominently displayed in the pizzeria's window. Big John's Hometown Pizza also received positive publicity about a year and a half ago when a health inspector was accompanied by a newspaper reporter in order to check every corner of the kitchen. "The inspector said it was the cleanest place had ever seen," says Barnett. "It just proves that food safety can be a real selling point these days."