You have seen our idea:

LET US HAVE A SAFE KITCHEN, EVERY DAY.

You may have liked it.

You may also have agreed with one simple thought behind it:

We don't want kitchen staff to remember Food Safety. We want them to THINK Food Safety. 

But agreeing with the idea is one thing.

Starting work inside your kitchen is another.

So where do we begin?

We believe we should begin by doing very little.

We first come and watch.

We understand your kitchen.

We understand your people.

We understand how your day actually moves.

We see what is already being done well.

We see what occasionally goes wrong.

We see what keeps going wrong.

And sometimes, we may discover something more important.

Something may have been happening for so long that nobody even thinks it is wrong anymore.

That is why, before talking about training or behaviour change, we suggest a:

SAFE KITCHEN DIAGNOSTIC

Not an inspection.

Not an audit.

Not a test.

And certainly not a fault-finding exercise.

It is simply an attempt to understand:

How does Food Safety actually happen in this kitchen, every day? 

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1.1 WHY DO A DIAGNOSTIC FIRST?

Every kitchen is different.

A 200-room hotel kitchen is different from a 60-seat restaurant.

A banquet kitchen is different from an all-day dining restaurant.

A cloud kitchen is different from a resort.

A restaurant serving 300 lunches in two hours is different from one serving 70 meals spread across the evening.

Even two restaurants serving exactly the same food may work very differently.

One may receive vegetables every morning.

Another may receive them three times a week.

One may prepare most things fresh.

Another may do substantial advance preparation.

One may have 25 kitchen staff.

Another may have eight people doing almost everything.

So we don't want to arrive with a standard answer.

We first want to understand the kitchen in front of us.

That is the purpose of the Diagnostic.

First understand. Then decide what needs to change.

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1.2 WE MAY ACTUALLY FIND THAT MANY THINGS ARE ALREADY RIGHT

This is important.

A Diagnostic does not begin with the assumption that something is wrong.

A kitchen that has been operating for years will normally have many good practices already.

An experienced cook may be extremely careful about food temperatures.

A storekeeper may have developed an excellent way of rotating stock.

A senior kitchen worker may instinctively separate raw chicken work from other preparation.

A cleaner may know exactly which corner attracts pests if it is not cleaned properly.

A Head Chef may have developed very good closing routines.

We want to find these things too.

Because Behaviour Change does not always mean:

"Stop doing this."

Sometimes it means:

"This is working very well. Let us make sure everybody starts doing it this way."

That is also improvement.

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1.3 THEN WHAT EXACTLY WILL WE DO?

We propose to understand the kitchen through Five Components.

1. We First Understand Your Kitchen

2. We Establish Where We Are Today

3. We Understand Three Groups Differently

4. We Observe the Real Kitchen Day

5. We Look Beyond Daily Work

These are not five separate audits.

They overlap.

Something we see while understanding the kitchen may become important when we observe breakfast closure.

A conversation with an Entrant may help us understand something we later discuss with a Senior.

Something that appears perfectly fine during one dinner service may look very different when we look at the same practice over several days.

So the Diagnostic grows gradually.

Like understanding a person.

You don't understand someone by asking 100 questions in one sitting.

You spend some time together.

You listen.

You observe.

You ask a few questions.

And slowly, the real picture starts appearing.

That is roughly how we want to understand a kitchen too.