Give Your Patrons Every Reason To Return

Texas Restaurant Supply believes most of you restaurant owners had to endure a lot of storms and bad weather over this last winter and stormy spring. Keeping that in mind, when was the last time you took a good hard look at how clean your facility is?  Is it beautiful and clean? If not, the good news is you have time then to get things in shape before warm weather crowds start showing up for breakfast,  lunch, and dinner.

This brutal weather nationwide in late 2014 and Spring of 2015 has likely taken it's toll on many parts of your restaurant both inside and out. Summer weather usually means longer days and hopefully more guest arrivals. It's time to remove the last remnants of winter grit, grime and lingering debris.

Extended rain storms, snow, and blowing winds may negatively impact the visual appearance and cleanliness of your facility. New eyes need to be looking for a deep clean of everything. Ceilings, surfaces, flooring, rest rooms, hallways, entry areas, and most especially windows are usually the worst for storm abuse. Decor may be dusty, or may need to be refreshed if the budget allows. How does your restaurant smell?  For sure, a complete spring clean will go a long way toward making your restaurant shine this summer. A fresh smell in every location means positive impact for each new diner who stops by for a great meal. Keeping an apple pie or a great smelling dessert baking will keep those diners returning. Remember to continue to clean and sanitize all surfaces, both in the front and back areas of the kitchen clean of dust will also help in the life of those counters and tables.

Texas Restaurant Supply has a  Cleaning Focus Checklist that will whip your staff, kitchen, service areas and dining areas into shape for the summer:

1. Inspect exterior doors. A building’s exterior bears the brunt of winter weather. This includes glass, screens, signage, harware and kick plates, threasholds and mats. Start at the ceiling and take a look at everything. Starting at the top, carefully inspect all parts of your exterior-facing doors, including the door handle. New paint to enhance brightness from the street, tightening any loose screws, and replace any worn parts. Check locks for proper use, and make sure they maintain the integrity of the building and current security measures in place.
2. Inspect all waiting areas, benches, interior reservations stands, and checkout counters. Everything should really be visibally clean, free of cobwebs, and it should smell wonderful as soon as you come inside. Make sure all mirrors shine.
3. Scrub and deep clean all floors. Whether you have hard floors or carpet, every restaurant staff should deep clean floors once the weather begins to warm. Studies have shown that deep cleaning, when combined with an ongoing maintenance program, can double the overall life of your floor. Unconscious subliminal negative items can directly affect your bottom line. You may be surprised at how much this means.
4. Clean all glass, interior signage and awnings. The windows into your restaurant are one of the first things that a customer sees before entering your business. Replace windows with cracks, and make sure all display cases are cleaned inside and out to put your best foot forward to each guest. Try coming in with the mindset of it being your first time to visit the restaurant. Objective is the keyword here.
5. Remove and declutter all unecessary decor. Keep all coat racks, closets, storage areas and restrooms spotless. Remove all brooms, sweepers, dusting items, and mop buckets out of sight. Remove all old or expired products, including cleaning chemicals, dirty mop heads, and broken equipment, hangers, and chairs with raggly upholstry. Consider using chemical dispensing systems with a weekly top-off service to help keep these areas clean in the future.
6. Replace carpets and floor mats regularily. Many businesses use a combination of scraper, entryway and walk-off matting to protect floors during each season, so spring and summer offers a great opportunity to check their condition. A matting provider can help manage your program. Laundering mats on a regular basis also protects the floors in your building.
7. Make sure a general handyman inspects the builiding facility from top to bottom. Painting touch ups, replacing damaged or stained ceiling tiles, change out burned out bulbs, and keep a sharp eye out for other unsightly areas that may need attention. Particularily rest room flooring, drains, and under sink areas. While these issues might not impact your day-to-day operations, they can affect how customers perceive your business. Believe us, patrons hate dirty restaurants.
8. Make sure your emergency contact list is current and well placed both up front, and in the kitchen. In many parts of the country, spring and summer will bring bad storms with heavy wind, rain and lightning. Review your emergency contact list to make sure all vendors are still in business and that all employees know what to do in an emergency situation. A fires safety plan needs to be readily available for emergency evacuation as well.

Make the most of this summer for your regular patrons, and see how far taking the steps above will enhance your business. Happy diners mean they will bring friends.  People love to eat, and when everything is clean, free of debris, and smells great, it's the food that sustains your success. Never forget that most people choose to eat out. Don't give them a negative reason not to join you for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

12922 Hempstead Hwy • Houston, Texas 77040 • 713-690-1231

1718 West Main Street Grand Prairie, Texas 75050 • 972-642-0513

Texas Restaurant Supply brings more than 35 years of combined experience in the restaurant, restaurant equipment, food service and related industries to the internet sales marketplace. Together we offer a wide variety of quality, new and used restaurant equipment, kitchen supplies, smalls, appliances, furniture and decor at auctions weekly. Texas Restaurant Supply  buys and sells restaurant equipment in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and nationwide for your convenience.

Remember that Texas Restaurant Supply provides auctions to the Used Restaurant Industry Community in Texas and the USA for your convenience: Dallas used restaurant equipment, Irving used restaurant equipment, and Houston used restaurant equipment are only a phone call away. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Call us here at Texas Restaurant Supply, together we can find options to secure your business for the future…Texas Restaurant Supply provides auctions to the Used Restaurant Industry Community in Texas for your convenience: Houston used restaurant equipment Dallas used restaurant equipment, and Irving used restaurant equipment.

Minimize Foodborne Illness Risks

The latest round of illness from food in Texas has had a profound effect and wake up call for many plants that manufacture food products. This scenario has also had a two fold cause and effect on many other companies. First, and most importantly, those in violation must clean up and institute better policies for testing and production. Secondly, it is well known that the FDA is getting tougher when it comes to health inspections. Texas Restaurant Supply here in Houston wants to make sure you have preventive controls in place. Food Safety and Proper Inspection do go hand in hand.

As you are well aware, if you own outright the restaurant facility or are part of a national chain, compliance with food safety regulations have tightened across the nation. Reactive response to violations is really not the best rule of thumb to follow where food safety is concerned. As a restaurant operator the Food and Drug Administration is now insisting that you must become ongoing and proactive. Prevention is the watchword of the day.  The FDA wants you to do all you can to prevent food safety issues.

Stringent regulations from the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) expands the agency’s powers over food safety issues. The major goal of FSMA is to prevent foodborne illness. Regulations within FSMA are designed to steer all segments of the food industry into adopting preventive controls. You need to review the latest regs for your restaurant facility, and what is required by the manufacturers to maintain the integrity of your current and future restaurant equipment purchases.

When a health department official comes into your facility for an inspection, not only will the examine your physical structure, but they will also see if you have proper procedures in place to prevent foodborne illness. Prevention is more commonly referred to as HACCP—Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point. In many cities proper Code Compliance is required, and the restaurant can now be penalized if it appears a procedure you’re doing might lead to a problem, even if the inspector does not witness the problem during a visit.

Minimize Food Borne Illness Risks

To reduce and minimize the risk of a food safety problem in your facility, and to pass an inspection, one of the most important procedures you need to have in place is a structured self-audit program. A program that allows you to monitor and evaluate your own food safety, cleaning and sanitation procedures. We only need think of Blue Bell to realize what this means here in Texas. Even with recognized approved testing, risk may not be minimized.  Even if you have a formal third-party audit program, nothing can replace the importance of a regular self-audit. Accepting this responsibility now means less expenses later.

The single most important benefit from implementation of a program like this, is a  health department inspector takes a snapshot of your operation once or twice a year, and a third-party audit company, if you are using one, is doing a more detailed, objective and valued examination on a quarterly or monthly basis. On the other hand, you and your staff are in your restaurant on a daily basis. You are the key to compliance, prevention and continuous improvement.

Texas Restaurant Supply in Houston,  Dallas, and Irving; wants to suggest some options and basics of a self-audit program. While the following list may not be all-inclusive or as complete as your location requires, we believe that this is a great place to start. Keep in mind adjustments and intensity of the self-audit may vary based on what your cleaning and sanitizing program may need to have. Thinking in terms of a master audit schedule; which once implemented is very easy if you break it down to what is needed to be done daily, weekly, monthly and with  quarterly updates.

Self Audit Basics

Maintain A Positive Attitude -  Recognize the importance of a food safety program that prevents foodborne illness is first on the list. Companies with food service and food preparation must not conduct an effective self-audit with a lazy or blind eye. There should never be an area the inspector can't see (i.e."You can’t look in there."). Making sure locked doors and storage areas, panels under dish machines, grates, or enclosed pipes are areas of sanitation focus means violations would never be a problem.

Support Of Team members - Regular inspection by all team members insures no missed areas are possible. Texas Restaurant Supply understands from experience that one person looking at the same conditions day after day will losetheir eye for detail and miss things. This alone is why periodic third-party audits help. Making sure these are always in the budget means saving money later.  Education about food safety in general, proper ceaning and sanitation for your physical facility, and proper storage are all issues that can be maintained long before the next inspection.

Proper Document Review - Implementing proper food safety while cooking, if you fail to maintain temperature logs, production logs, par-cooking logs and the like, you may not have what you need to protect your procedures currently in place. No documention means it didn't happen as far as an inspector is concerned. Remember false filling in a log is a serious vioation as well and many cities have fines in place for those types of violations.

Keep All Checklists Handy -  Whether you’ve adopted a checklist used by the health department, a third-party audit company or one you created yourself, remember that it must be based on the FDA Food Code or one from your local regulatory authority. The best rule of thumb to avoid a violation is keep stricter standards in place across the board. Make sure staff is aware of any changes that may result in new rules and regulations at food safety meetings.

Maintain A Physical Inspection -  If there has been a problem, such as drain flies, roaches, debris, or mold, spend a little more time in each of those areas regularily so there won't be a problem the day of an unscheduled inspection.

Stay Observant - Review of video, photos, observing food handlers performing their job during a rush periods, and a monitor  to see if procedures are being properly followed is always a great idea to help keep your staff alert to what is expected.

Proper Documentation For Everything -  Take notes, record temperatures, take pictures, record observations, have regular food safety meetings and frequent ongoing education to new ways to do things and proper techniques and equipment to make it happen should be the norm; not the exception.

Frequent Review and analysis -  All information you gather will be meaningless unless you take appropriate corrective action for noncompliance issues and/or follow up on opportunities for improvement and training. That is a given. Remember there are very inexpensive programs available that can create a database which will allow proper evaluation of the data you obtain and this is very valuable to begin to see challenges in particular areas, help to identify trends and problems that keep hapening.

The Right Equipment & Tools - All kitchen staff, especially your chefs, sous chefs or line cooks cannot be expected to perform their job properly without the proper tools for the job. Consider this attitude for the self audit staff as well. Keeping the basics in place at all times is a must. Here is a quick checklist you may keep posted in a visible location, present with each staff meeting, and include with additions of new policy in paychecks.

Kitchen Food & Safety Basics Include:

• Head covering for all kitchen staff
• Slip-resistant shoes approved by the company
• Properly calibrated thermometers for each station. It must be water resistant, fast and won’t stab you as you move through the kitchen
• Alcohol swabs or wipes to clean and sanitize that thermometer after every use
• Knee pads. Low-profile knee pads worn under your pants will protect your knees and allow you to look at places like under the cooks' line if you are on the inspection staff for audit
• Clipboards, pads and retracting pens or tablets are easy to use. If you are using a tablet, there are harnesses available that allow the tablet to hang from your neck, leaving your hands free if you need to use both hands for something else
• Have A Flashlight. A small flashlight that's as bright as a car headlight and easily clips into a shirt pocket. LED's are great
• Extending mirror. A quicklook under the lip of a counter or prep table can be very helpful
• Keep A Screwdriver and pliers Handy. Open all panels, floor drains, and filters to insure there are no issues.
• Camera. Tablets and Videos are Easy To Use - The use smartphones and digital cameras can capture images in your staffed areas. Remember, this is not about catching someone or punishing someone. This is for learning, training and educating purposes.
• Employee Packs Are A Must - Keeping a way for your staff to hold all these items is to your advantage. Loss prevention is kept in check, and if you monitor them weekly and replace challenges with the equipment the staff is aware of their importance to maintain them on a daily basis. A lab coat, cargo pants or even a fanny pack is appropriate and having a locker to keep them in the begin the day may go a long way.

Taking the time and effort to establish a food safety management program  that includes a self audit program; for your facility and staff means follow up is required. Keeping your staff motivated about protocols in place, providing a way to make that happen, and performing proper self-audits means all staff members are a vital part of the business.

Texas Restaurant Equipment is pleased to have you as our clients. Helping you with all the purchases and sales of your new and used restaurant equipment means you are prepared to offer the best to your patrons. Serving all of Texas and shipping to our nationwide clients means we have our finger on the pulse of your needs in the food industry. Texas Restaurant Supply has inventory arriving on a daily basis. This inventory is made available to you through our online catalogue at http://www.txrestro.com  Whether you need to buy or sell one piece, or the contents of an entire restaurant, Texas Restaurant Equipment is your resource for late-model restaurant, bakery and bar equipment.

Call today to speak with a restaurant equipment specialist at both customer service numbers. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Your New & Used Restaurant Equipment Supplier in Houston & Dallas

Looking for Used Restaurant Equipment?

Call us here at Texas Restaurant Supply, together we can find options to secure your business for the future…

Houston: 713-690-1231 Dallas: 972-642-0513