Safety in the Commercial Kitchen with David Darnley

Commercial Kitchen, Kitchens, Restaurant, hospitality, safety, HACCP, Hazards Analysis Critical Control Points, equipment safety, burns, cuts, material handling, Fryer, Slicer, Mixers, Slicers, and Fryers!!  Oh My!!  Inside the commercial kitchen lurks a myriad of hazards that workers can be exposed to.  Trouble is, some aren’t always a hazard, some aren’t always visible, and many are so common we don’t consider them a danger.  The numbers show, while most of the injuries that happen in a restaurant are minor like small cuts or burns, or strains and sprains, major life changing injuries can and do occur.  Head injuries from a slip and fall, blindness from a hot grease splash, 3rd degree burns from a steam kettle, or an amputation from an unguarded mixer or knife slip.  Add to that some stats like 1 in 3 employed teens work in the restaurant industry or 6 out of every 10 American’s first job was in food service, and you get a challenging recipe for consistent safety and injury prevention.  For the episode, Safety in the Commercial Kitchen, Peter speaks with Dave Darnley, Safety Management Consultant at MEMIC about hazards in the kitchen and strategies to integrate safety into the fast paced workflow of the restaurant business.  They swap stories about assignments gone wrong and how to prevent little things from becoming big problems.  Want to know more?  Check it out at the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast.   Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch, and work as a safety management consultant with MEMIC. So let me frame today's topic for you. Mixer's Slicers and Fryer's. Oh, my. We're talking about commercial kitchen safety hazards in the kitchen can take many forms. Some, like knives, meat slicers, fryers and grills are obvious. Others like curled up mats, spills, reaching heavy stock on high shelves and rushing aren't quite as obvious until the injury occurs. So today I'm speaking with Dave Darnley, safety management consultant with MEMIC, about commercial kitchen safety. Dave is part of our Northeast Loss Control team and is based in the Buffalo, New York area. Dave. Welcome to the podcast. Dave Darnley: Peter, thanks so much. Really appreciate you having me today. Peter Koch: Right on. So great to have you on the line here and talking to us about kitchen safety. One of the very actually, [00:01:00] it's a big part of what you do, but it's a small part of your experience overall. So really, before we dig into that topic I want to talk a little bit about that extensive background that you have in safety management. So you've got a master's in safety management from West Virginia University. You've got your CHSP and CPHA. So you're a certified health care safety professional and you're certified safe patient handling associate designations, as well as being certified in New York State as a workplace safety and loss prevention program consultant. Tons of education, but having talked to you over the years. We both know that education doesn't always bring practical solutions to the workplace safety problems. So tell me a little bit about your experience working with different companies and their safety programs in the field. Dave Darnley: Absolutely. Thanks, Pete. And thank you for mentioning some of the background and experience I do have. It's kind of funny. And looking at that. I might [00:02:00] have more designations that have expired than I have current ones actively. But it happens when you spend 30 plus years in the field. It's been it's been a fun ride, learned a lot and definitely worked with a lot of different types of companies, a lot of different kinds of businesses and industries that we get in and out of. So from that standpoint, I would say I'm very much a generalist, if you will. I interact with people in all different levels of the organization. So I may be talking with the line workers and folks in the kitchen that are doing the work. But it's probably middle management that's taking me around and showing me the establishment. But at the end of the day, we meet with the C Suite people and the owners and talk about what they have. So communication really becomes a really big key to what we do, being able to talk to folks at every level of an organization [00:03:00] and being able to come up with reasons that ring true to them as to why safety is so important. Peter Koch: Yeah, sure. And especially when we're talking about like hospitality, safety or safety within the restaurant and hospitality industry, there's a ton of frequency. So a lot of small minor injuries within the restaurant industry. Not a lot of huge ones, although there are some. So sometimes getting the organization to understand the impact that increasing safety or focusing on safety or integrating safety can be challenging. And you might you might convince the worker when in your walk around, but getting that, getting the rest of the organization to support the efforts of the worker or middle management really has to be integrated all the way through. So, yeah, that's a really, communication is a huge part of making safety functional, especially in the hospitality and restaurant industries. [00:04:00] Dave Darnley: Absolutely. Absolutely. And in doing so, I try to take a consultative approach to it. Peter Koch: Right. Dave Darnley: You know, I'm not going to come in as the safety cop. I'm not coming in as the health inspector. I'm not the OSHA inspector. You know, we want to try to get people to build really safety into their operations, much the same as they build in food safety, food quality. You know, safety should be an integrated, integral part of everything that they're doing. Peter Koch: Right. Shouldn't be that extra thing. It should be just part of their every day, their every shift function of what happens. And we're going to get into some of those parts and pieces as we dig into the meat of the topic today. But let's just talk about the pervasiveness. So there's some interesting stats out there about the restaurant association. So there's a group called the National Restaurant Association, and they have a fact [00:05:00] book that they put out every year. And they talk about the statistics and demographics of the restaurant industry itself and really some interesting statistics and I thought these would be interesting to talk a little bit about as we start to get into our topic. So they state that the 2019 fact book reports that nearly six in ten adults have worked in the restaurant industry. So let's just take us, for example. So I don't know about you, but I've worked in the restaurant industry. I've worked in multiple different parts of the restaurant and commercial kitchen industry side. How about how about you? Dave Darnley: I did. I did my first I'll call it real job after my paper route was working in a smorgasbord restaurant. Peter Koch: Oh no kidding. Dave Darnley: Yeah. Yeah. I started in the dish room. Worked my way up to I think you started with colds so you did the salads and things [00:06:00] of that nature and then desserts and then hot and then I went to the banquet side and whatnot. So I spent a couple of years doing that as a teenager, junior and senior year of high school. Peter Koch: Yeah, right on. right on. Interesting. So similar. I didn't do the smorgasbord thing but part of part time work as where I worked for an amusement park. So as I was looking for extra hours, I was a lifeguard in high school so I was looking for extra hours and I got to work in one of the concession areas making sandwiches. So when I didn't have lifeguard duty, when the pool wasn't open or the waterfront wasn't open, I was slinging sandwiches and cold cuts. So right , so and you talk about it's like your first job after your paper route. The other statistic there is one in three Americans got their first job experience in a restaurant. So that's pretty, pretty close to you and I as well. And I imagine that there's some listeners that have had that same [00:07:00] experience. The other interesting statistic is that one in three employed teens from the study work in the restaurant industry. So if you think about this, I mean, goes back to that first job that people have, it's a great opportunity. But the restaurant industry employs young people. It employs older people. It employs people across the generational spectrum, across the cultural spectrum. And so there's quite a few challenges just on the employment side when we start to think about how we integrate safety into the restaurant industry or the commercial kitchen, because there's a ton of different hazards that folks are exposed to. So think about your own experience, Dave, and just take me through some of the hazards in the commercial kitchens that you've either walked through or worked in. Dave Darnley: Sure, absolutely. [00:08:00] There's some that are obvious, I guess. Right. And we've already alluded to it a little bit, but certainly cuts folks that are using knives quite a bit, typically have slicers, can also have broken glass. So one of the things that we always look for when we go through a kitchen is do they have a procedure or a process for if a plate or a glass, something breaks in the kitchen. And basically that simply is to have typically a plastic bucket that's marked glass on it so that you can sweep it up and take care of getting rid of that, separate from putting it in, say, the general garbage, where there's going to be the plastic liner. And when you go to pull that out, you're going to make a mess and potentially have some  other hazards as well. Peter Koch: Sure. You think about that for just a second, though, that's an interesting part, because you talked about broken glass and you can actually create a hazard, like you said, by taking that glass and putting it into the [00:09:00] wrong container. And how many times have you actually watched someone pick up shards or broken glass, broken container, whether it be on the floor? They dropped it on the floor in front of the House or back of the House or it's in the dish room. And something's been broken actually in the dish area and they pick it up with their hands. Dave Darnley: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Peter Koch: They might have a procedure, but it might not even. It might not be functional or working. Dave Darnley: Right. And that's definitely where and I know one of our colleagues who has been on before, Randy Klatt, always talks about when something like that happens. Where is the supervisor in this? You know, where's the accountability? And absolutely, that's a piece of it. You know, the employee is getting trained. The employee has a procedure to follow. Sometimes they choose not to. And that's where supervision has to come in and remind them of the right way to do it. Peter Koch: Yeah, a key part of that. Sure. So I interrupted [00:10:00] you there. So talk about some of the other hazards that you see. Dave Darnley: Oh, sure. Well, so slip trip and fall. That is definitely one that we see. You know wet floors you can have spills. Certainly you can either, you know, drop as you're making the sandwich, the sliced tomato goes down on the ground. And then, of course, if you step on that, that's going to be slippery. There's waters and soups and liquids, things of that nature. Oftentimes, there's an ice machine that might be in the back of the kitchen, not in the cooking area, per say, but off kind of to the side of it a little bit. There may also be some coffee machines, things of that nature. So and then you've got the cooler, the freezer getting in and out of the cooler and freezer, the metal ramps. This is one that I see, I guess not often, but it's one that I will catch where you have a metal ramp coming in and out of a freezer. Typically [00:11:00] that will have a grit strip on there to help, you know, folks. But you've got the dollies of the food going in and out, the people going in and out, those wear down. And what's more is you may get some moisture on there. You might get some wetness, some condensation. If it's in the freezer, that might freeze and turn into ice. And in looking at that, we have often found that one of the culprits could be just simply that the seal on the door, the integrity of the seal has somehow been broken. You know, maybe it's been damaged, maybe it's worn out, et cetera, and taken care of that. So, you know, when you talk about I guess it almost goes into safety from a near miss standpoint or maybe from an inspection standpoint. As you catch these things, then you have to take a look at it. You have to figure out what the real root cause of why that [00:12:00] moisture, why that ice is there and then come up with a corrective action and take care of it. Peter Koch: So, yeah, it's a great example of kind of integrating the process that a improperly maintained piece of equipment, whether that's the ice machine or the seal on the cooler, the walk in cooler, the walk in freezer door, allowing moisture or condensation to accumulate in different areas, just not inspecting it, not maintaining it, that creates a hazard. And if we really think about safety as an integrated process, all the way through the kitchen, back of the house to front of the house, to maintenance, to purchasing, to supervision, then that if it's caught ahead of time, we can remove or eliminate that particular hazard, which is right on the right, on the top. If we can remove the hazard, the injury can't happen. The challenge with a lot of our stuff is you can't remove the hazard, right. You can't not have a fryer. You can't not have a grill. You can't not have [00:13:00] some of the preparation tools that are traditionally used within the kitchen, depending on what you're producing. There certainly are some options, but there's not always options. What about other equipment hazards that might be in the kitchen? That might not be quite as obvious. I mean, we talked about fryolators and there are certainly commercials out there about how fryolators can be dangerous. And we've talked a little bit about meat slicers. And I just I had an example just a couple of months ago where I had a client using the meat slicer and they cut their thumb on the meat slicer. Yeah. Yeah. Which was my first. I'll tell you a little story for me. One of my first experiences was working for another company, again, looking for some extra hours. There is a small mom and pop restaurant down the road. I applied, got the job. I was a dishwasher at first and then I helped with some food prep. And one evening we were really busy and someone had to clean the meat [00:14:00] slicer at the end of the day and the person was me. I had experience in the kitchen. I might have been, you know, nineteen years old at the time. Twenty years old, never had cleaned the meat slicer before, had to use them before and I was cleaning it, I had taken the guard off it. And of course you know traditionally you're not supposed to but if it's running. And if the blades running it's easier to clean because I just have to keep that rag on it. So I was cleaning it. Great. Someone called my name. I turned around, moved the rag and it caught the side of my pinkie. And I actually still have a scar there from where they had to stitch the flap of skin back on. So it really taught me a lesson that it's not just the machine, but it's how I pay attention to the machine and follow procedures. And it wasn't until a lot later till I really realized that I didn't really have any training to do that particular task anyway. So what other tools or what other equipment do you see in [00:15:00] the industrial kitchen that can be a hazard to the workers around it or the other users? Peter Koch: Well, as you mentioned, with the stoves, ovens, broilers, fryers and steam tables is one. And all of these can result in burns, you know, your pots and pans, grills. So let me just back up a second to steam tables. This is something that I am seeing a lot of in terms of and thankfully, they're fairly minor injuries. But you can you know, you can get a pretty good burn from a steam table if you're going in without using the gloves. And if you're not following the procedure of maybe lifting it out from the back toward the front, if you will, so that it's further away from your body and that but we're seeing these oftentimes now in the new nursing homes. some of your continuum care facilities in that, you know. So in these facilities, there are the big, large commercial kitchens that, you know, where we're really [00:16:00] kind of focusing and talking about today. However, many of them now are doing these little small. They look like a small domestic type of the kitchen in different wings of the facility so that it gives a little bit more homey approach to the residents. And, you know, six, eight, 10 at a time can kind of come down with the neighbors that you live next to in the hall and whatnot. You sit at the table and then the folks serve you the food. So the food's made in the big commercial kitchen and then it's transported to these steam tables. So steam tables is definitely one. And as I say, there's some PPE and some procedure to follow with that will typically help you not get burned. But we have we've seen that pop on us. Another one that's and it's just a little bit unusual. And I've got a few of these in my geography in the Buffalo area. These are charcoal fueled grills. Peter Koch: Sure. [00:17:00] Dave Darnley: They are indoor with the hood. So that even though you're indoor, you can make, say, the typical fair the hot dog, the hamburger, the grilled chicken breasts, that type of the thing. So this is not unique to our area. I take it, Peter, these are things that you've seen up in Maine and elsewhere, too. Peter Koch: In a couple of places I've seen them. They're certainly not common. And I've only seen once at one of the resorts that I was at, one of their particular restaurant establishments, and I didn't really get into a lot about it. But charcoal, how do they start the charcoal? Is it traditionally started or do they start it with like a propane fire? Dave Darnley: It's a great question. And one of my sadder moments, actually, and in consulting with, you know, going around and taking a look, sometimes we do a lot of things ahead of the loss for safety [00:18:00] and for prevention. But every once in a while, we get pulled in after the loss to take a look at from an incident, accident investigation standpoint what happened. And so I went out to a facility that had one of these charcoal type grills and they run probably 18, I would say close to 18 hours a day where that charcoal is on. So oftentimes what they would do is they would come in the next day and that might still be warm. Oh, sure, there might still be an ember or something down there and they would build the charcoal. Off the top of that. They would typically use a charcoal, lighter fluid, small amount of it. Peter Koch: So traditionally, starting at like you would outside almost. Right? Dave Darnley: Exactly. Exactly. The facility had run out of the charcoal lighter fluid and [00:19:00] they had let the manager know that they were out of fluid. It actually got put up on a board that they needed it. And a couple of days went by and they still didn't have the new charcoal fluid. So the cook came in that day and he was supposed to start, let's just say at. 10:00 in the morning. To get things ready, so that opening would be at 11:00. Well, he was running over a half an hour late, got to work late. He comes in. He's now got to get this fire going and he's behind. He goes to look for the charcoal lighter fluid that still hasn't gotten replaced. They still don't have it. Peter Koch: Oh, no. Dave Darnley: So now he's trying to think, what can I do? What can I use? You know what? I'm going to put gasoline on it. That'll start. It's the same as it's the same as charcoal. Peter Koch: That’s the same thing right. Dave Darnley: Well, this this poor young man did not realize that that's not, in fact, true. Peter Koch: Very true. Dave Darnley: So [00:20:00] he went out he went out to the shed where they, you know, keep the gasoline for the lawn mowing equipment, things like that, because this was kind of like a hot dog hamburger stand. Peter Koch: Sure. Dave Darnley: Kind of a place. This is a smaller place. So they go actually, pardon me, there was another gentleman there, only two young kids on, and he sent the other kid out. He said, here, take this cup. And he handed him a Styrofoam cup and he said, go get me just a little bit of gasoline. I'm going to get the charcoal, I'll put the charcoal on here. You get the gas. So the kid goes out and he pours the gasoline into the Styrofoam cup. And guess what happens? The Styrofoam cup dissolves from the gasoline. And so he runs back in and he says, hey, that didn't work. The cup dissolved. So the kid goes, oh, no problem. Here, put it in this metal one. So he puts it in the metal. And so it's not clicking to anybody yet. You know, just how volatile the gasoline [00:21:00] is. Peter Koch: Right? They had a chance. Dave Darnley: Puts it in the metal cup and the kid comes in and the guy that was putting the charcoal on the stove who was running late to begin with, he says to him, he goes, go ahead, pour that on and we'll get it going like this. Like, I'm not pour it on, you know, and he hands the cup to this kid. So sadly, the kid, you know, not knowing any better, he poured it on and he didn't realize that there was still some ember underneath. There was still there was still a heat source. So when he poured this gasoline onto the charcoal to try to get the fire going, as you can imagine, you know, it lit and it came right up into the cup and it almost exploded, if you will. The gasoline was just all over him. And I ended up sitting, you know, with the manager watching a video of this kid literally running around the kitchen on fire until [00:22:00] the other kid grabbed a hose from the dish area and squirted him. So very sad, you know, infinitely preventable on so many levels. Peter Koch: Sure. Dave Darnley: And when we talk about, you know, kitchen safety, you know, safety, safety. Right. So, you know, why didn't this, you know, employee know the hazards of gasoline? Let's take a look at your sds book. What sort of training have you provided? Well low and behold, we don't even have an sds in the book for gasoline. Sure. Peter Koch: Because it's not in the kitchen. Dave Darnley: Exactly. It wasn't in the kitchen. It was in the shed outside the kitchen. But that was still part of their operations and what they did. So there was no sds, there was no training provided. How about we back up to just the fact that, you know, we knew that we needed this supply. Why did it take multiple days for somebody to, you know, [00:23:00] pay attention to knowing we needed it, going out and getting it, replacing it, etc.? So there were, you know, could we have another alternative? Could we have a backup? I have a charcoal grill at home that I use and I use one of those chimneys. Peter Koch: Sure. Dave Darnley: If you're familiar with it. Where I remember I was a Boy Scout back in the day and they used to sell three pound coffee and metal cans, we used to take the cans and make our own chimneys back then. So. Well, now, of course, you know, we've got little companies. But it works great. One piece of paper underneath you light it up. Chimney effect there is you know, there's no explosion hazard whatsoever. And so we talked with them obviously after the fact about a lot of these things and, you know, the several improvements that could be made to try to make that operation safer [00:24:00] for him. But, yeah, that was a sad one. Peter Koch: It is. But it highlights a lot of why we're talking about kitchen safety in the first place. And so you think about the people that were involved young and then you think about the tools that they were using. None of the tools are you're not talking about. A big hundred pound Hobart three phase mixer that just looks like it could kill you. You're talking about a charcoal grill. You're talking about something that they probably cooked on or something similar to what they cook on, on the weekends. Or they might have had experience with family and friends with that thing. And, you know, they've. Why do they need training? Well, you need training because it's not the same as at home and it's a different environment. And there are hazards that you may or may not be familiar with, like your comment about gasoline. Right. So gasoline, it's everywhere. People [00:25:00] put it in their cars, they put it in their lawnmowers, they put in their snow blowers, they put it in their weed whackers, gasolines everywhere. How dangerous is gasoline? It's a lot more dangerous than people think. But because it's all over the place, we think that it has similar properties to other stuff that we might use to ignite a recreational fire. Regardless of all the YouTube videos that you can see out there about people blowing themselves up, throwing gasoline on a campfire or something else. So it really does highlight that story. As tragic as it is and as sad as it is, it highlights the real need to do that hazard assessment. What's in your facility that poses a hazard and your employees are exposed to it? How do we control that hazard? What's the hierarchy that we're going to use to control the hazard? And how do we make sure that all of our employees are aware of it? So, you know, thank you for sharing that story. I think [00:26:00] probably I know I can relate to it for sure. And I know many of our listeners can probably relate to maybe not the same situation, but a particular set of circumstances that allowed that event to occur. Dave Darnley: Well, let me just piggyback a little bit off of that, Peter, too, from the standpoint that, you know, sometimes doing the assessment, right. Sometimes look at, say, hood cleaning as an example, you know, in the commercial kitchens where you get the large, you know, grease, ventilation hoods that it's over the grease producing cooking materials. Oftentimes there's a fixed extinguishing system integrated into that and whatnot just to give people a visual of what we're talking about. So those need to be cleaned from time to time, right? I know it. This is money. But, you know, if I were in that person's shoes, if at all possible for my [00:27:00] money, I'm going to have I'm going to pay to have an outside contractor clean the inside hoods and equipment if I can, because that in and of itself can be dangerous. Peter Koch: Sure not only not having a well functioning hood, but the cleaning itself is dangerous. Absolutely. Absolutely. I had a young person again who, you know, was given the task to go up and do that cleaning. And, you know, again. Right. The domino theory of how many different things have to actually go wrong until you get all the way to that last domino where we have the loss. But, you know, the short story on this one was he decided to climb up onto the cooking equipment to be able to reach the grates and bring those down his and he did it during the middle of the shift. [00:28:00] So, of course, everything is live, if you will. Everything's functioning and operating and hot. And his foot slipped off of the flat grill surface into the Fryer Grill and he literally fried his foot. You know, again, that's a life changing injury for somebody. And you know, at first blush, they're trying to do the right thing. But there's so many different bad choices that got made. And then, you know, there's Randy Klatt in the background again, going, where's the supervisor? Because, you know, where is that supervision to guide this person? Somebody told this person to do that task but must have told them to do it without any guidance or training or supervision. Peter Koch: Just get it done. Dave Darnley: For it to go that wrong. And so, you [00:29:00] know, when it comes to things like hood cleaning and potentially grease traps as well, that's another unique kind of to the industry. Exposure and some of those grease traps are fairly small and fairly easy to deal with. And if you do it regularly and pull the grease out and get it into the drum, you know it can be done without too much difficulty or just the odor, sometimes it comes off of those grease traps can be bad. But again, if you do it frequently, it's not too bad. But if you have one of the larger commercial grease traps that I mean, some of these are large enough that, you know, people can almost get in them you may want to consider for the money that it costs is to have an outside firm come in. And some of the same firms that do the hood cleaning will do the grease trap, cleaning and removal as well. Peter Koch: Yeah, sure. You'd think about that on that hierarchy of control is I'm going to  substitute. [00:30:00] I'm going to eliminate. I'm going to get another company who is more qualified, better skilled and has all the equipment to do that dangerous task because I bet. Dave Darnley: Transfer that risk to them and eliminate the risk for your employees. Peter Koch: Absolutely right. So if you kind of go back and before that accident happened, before that person stepped onto the active equipment and slipped into the fryer, if you were there ahead of time and you posed that scenario like, so what if like, would this ever happen here? And you described that scenario, the answer from the supervisor? Well, that would never happen. That would never happen. No one would ever do that. How could someone be so silly or so mistaken as to do that? But it happens. And I you know, as you're telling that story, I had an account with a very similar incident instead of he didn't do it during [00:31:00] the workday when all the stuff was active. He did it after the shift and after they had closed up, he actually stood on a large sheet pan that had been placed over the fryolator itself. And was standing on that when it shifted. And he stepped basically into the probably two hundred and fifty degree oil at that point in time. So certainly, you know, could have been life changing like the individual, but certainly life changing for a short time while the burns healed for that individual. Dave Darnley: Absolutely. Peter Koch: And again, I went back and asked, so did you think this would ever happen? No, I never thought anything like this could happen. Well, why like, why do you think it won't happen? Is it because you're prepared for it or is it because you don't believe that anybody could be that ingenious to do something like that? And really, if you think about it from a supervision standpoint like that, supervisor really doesn't think [00:32:00] that someone could be that ingenious to put themselves in that precarious of a situation. They're not prepared. They're just they just don't think it would happen. So if they don't think it's going to happen, I don't have to prepare for it. Dave Darnley: Right. Peter Koch: Right. Right. Dave Darnley: And I think that particularly happens in your smaller establishments. Peter Koch: Sure. Peter Koch: Your one off family owned single location, you know, as opposed to some of your larger facilities, whether it be, you know, they're individually small, but they're you know, it's fast food. It's a chain restaurant or than your larger hotel restaurants. Yeah. You know, and the like. Because I think those facilities, those types of places are more likely because of their size, because of the amount of people, because of what's going on, they're more likely to have formality in their procedures. And when you have the formality in the procedure, then you do foresee some of these types [00:33:00] of potential exposures. Peter Koch: For sure. So let's talk about that for just a minute. So you've got a lot of policies and procedures in place, like I've made the point to make safety important. We've done stuff to make safety important, and I've got policies and procedures that will drive, that will drive behavior within the kitchen. How come then we still see injuries. We still see people not following those policies, procedures, what gets in the way of people following the policy and procedure and doing something that puts them at risk? Dave Darnley: I think a lot of times, Peter, it is the heat of the moment, if you will, from a production standpoint. Right. I think we see this sometimes in manufacturing when there's a peak period of production, when, you know, all the machines are on deck, everybody is running at full speed because we got, you know, several [00:34:00] big orders and we're backlogged and we've got to we got to get that product out the door. Right. Well, it can be very much similar in the food industry. If you're running a restaurant that typically does dinners, you know, you're going to start to see a few of your early birds show up. Around four o'clock or so, but probably between, you know, say five and seven peak hours. You know, all the tables are full. There's a line at the door or at the bar sitting, waiting for the next open available. And you're cranking out meals. Peter Koch: Your staff, your staff steps in to get everything done and to put the quality where they want and they want to make sure they can make production happen. And they want to make sure that people have a qualitative meal or a quality and qualitative quality meal. Yeah. Dave Darnley: Yeah, absolutely. Peter Koch: So productivity [00:35:00] gets in the way sometimes. And if we put that into the context of the statistics that we started this podcast that with where you've got one in three teens or employed teens work in the restaurant industry and many Americans, one in three Americans get their start. Their first job is within the restaurant industry. So you take younger workers or even inexperienced workers. They don't have to be young. They just might be very inexperienced within the restaurant business. It's their first job or their first job inside the restaurant business. And they get thrown into the job where, hey, this is pretty easy. People just come in every once in a while, it's pretty slow. And then all of a sudden, like you said, five o'clock happens, six o'clock happens depending on where you are, what type of food you're serving and how it works. But the rush time when people come in, the world changes. It's not a quiet, slow [00:36:00] paced kitchen. It is things are happening really fast and people are moving around. You, people are moving behind you. Food is moving all over the place. People are moving all over the place. And we tend not to always follow the procedures or we sometimes we don't follow the procedures that we are asked to follow because of productivity. Dave Darnley: Absolutely we see that all the time. And I think to your earlier point, whether we're talking kitchens or we could be talking about so many different types of businesses, because that's such a human nature piece of it. That's something that we see across the board. One of the things that I like to look for and, you know, sometimes I will come across in some of the typically the larger hotel restaurants, maybe the big casino restaurants, our resorts, things of that is the kitchens and the facilities [00:37:00] that have a formalized process and program in place. And what I found is that in these cases, there are sometimes following something called HACCP, Peter Koch: OK, Dave Darnley: H A C C P, that's actually a food safety and quality management system. HACCP itself is hazard analysis and critical control point. That's what the H A C C P stands for. And this is a very formal food safety food quality management system. But even though it's covering food production and it really covers food production and storage and distribution, and this is not just a restaurant food safety program. This actually covers the entire supply chain for food, kind [00:38:00] of from cradle to grave, if you will, for food production. Passive programs are and can be implemented into restaurants and they follow a fairly defined seven step process, where they're looking to do like a hazard analysis, if you will. Peter Koch: Sure. Dave Darnley: And they identify these critical control points. And as they find those they'll set limits, they'll establish monitoring for it, if need be, there's corrective actions implemented and then they just, you know, look overall to see that the program is working as they intended to. And there's a record keeping element to it like there is for most formal quality programs. So it would remind you in some ways for those with the manufacturing background of like, you know, maybe a Six Sigma, you know, one of those defined quality programs, if you will, where, you know, you take a look at and define [00:39:00] the process and, you know, you measure it and analyze it and improve it and control it, et cetera. So it really is, I think, a very it's very formal and it's definitely not for everybody. It would probably be a lot for some of your smaller places to follow. But for those that. Are larger and do do it, you know, you reap a lot of benefit out of it. And the thing that I like to see is to take and integrate the employees safety into the food quality and the safety programs, you know, make that employee safety piece of it kind of seamless to what you're doing just from a productivity and quality standpoint. Build it right into the process. That way, it's not stand alone. It doesn't become too expensive. It doesn't get cut. It doesn't go away. Hopefully it doesn't get ignored. Hopefully it is trained into the people [00:40:00] to such a degree that they know, you know, I've got to take a look at refrigeration temps or the food storage or handling. And, you know, I'm monitoring things like cool down periods and stuff and then doing line checks and looking at food rotation. But if we integrate into all of that, you know, while you're doing the lying and the temp checks to also be looking for, say, the spills or the housekeeping or the slip, trip fall hazards and things of that nature, I think it just it absolutely elevates your program overall. Peter Koch: Oh, sure. Dave Darnley: I'm a proponent of that. Peter Koch: That's a great idea. And really being able to take that takes something that you already do from a food safety standpoint and then integrate the practice of identifying some safety challenges, whether it's good or bad. So as like you said, I'm going through the line. I'm checking temps on [00:41:00] my steam table and making sure hot foods, hot, cold foods, cold taking temperatures. But I'm also looking are the mats there for the person to stand on is the person actually utilizing the right tool to serve whatever they're serving off the steam table. So they're not going to spill hot chili or hot soup on their hand when they deliver it. They're looking for employees having the right food safety equipment on. So do they have a cap or a hairnet if they're serving food or if they're in the back of the house? You know, are the not cross contaminating when they're preparing food? But on the same token, do they have the right, say, personal protective equipment on to keep themselves safe, whether that's a cut glove or an oven mitt or another tool to help them stay safe or stay farther away from the particular hazard that they're engaging in? Great idea. And I'm sort of those principles. Again, I just go back. I want to review the [00:42:00] HACCP principles again as we think about this. So the first one is to analyze your hazards. Dave Darnley: Correct conducting that hazard analysis. Yeah. Peter Koch: So then after that you do the hazard analysis and you identify what all the hazards are. Let's pull us out of the food safety standpoint. But we're looking at now personal safety, people safety, how to keep my people safe, the employees. What are the areas that that they could get hurt? How are they exposed to those hazards? Now they talk about critical control point, like what would a critical control point be if you're looking at it? Dave Darnley: Right. Identifying a critical control point. So I think it really goes back to some of what we talked about earlier with in the case of employee safety. Right. That potential for the burns, the cuts, the material handling type injury, you know, that that that point where you're doing the actual cutting or the [00:43:00] lifting. Peter Koch: So that's the exposure when we're talking about that that would be the actual exposure of the employee to the hazard that had been previously identified. Dave Darnley: Correct. Peter Koch: Awesome. So now they're exposed and now we're looking for how do we limit their exposure? Dave Darnley: Correct, talk about setting limits and then the monitoring piece follows that. Yeah, so for the setting limits, let's see how. I'm trying to come up with a scenario for you that I could describe. Peter KocH: Let's talk about, let's go back to fryer Safety. Right. So let's talk about cleaning the fryer at the end of the day. So I've got to change the oil out at the end of the day. And we know that that's a particular that's a particular hazard. So we've identified the hazard of the fryer. One of the control points for [00:44:00] exposure is when they are when they could be exposed to the hot oil at the end of the day, when they're cleaning it out, changing the oil. So then from there establishing limits. Right. So some of the limits that you might. Dave Darnley: Well, you could have a cool down period for the oil so that you wouldn't do it when it's, you know, at maximum temperature, you wait until it gets down to a certain point and that can be, you know, monitored by temperature and or time. Peter Koch: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I've seen a couple of places where I had one company that was just they were taken. They would let it cool down to a point and then they were just opening up the valve at the bottom and emptying it into a five gallon pail, which when it, got full enough then they would shut the valve off and then take that pail and dump it into something else. And then they would just keep doing [00:45:00] this. And there were so many touch points where that employee could be exposed to hot oil or than the other potentials for slip and fall from a hazard, a spill or something else. Dave Darnley: Splash. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Peter Koch: So those limits are again, that goes back to your hierarchy of controls. Can I eliminate it? And if I can't eliminate it, then can I substitute it? If I can't substitute it then do I, can I engineer it. I can't engineer it. What are the administrative controls and personal protective equipment that are required to be followed or used when I'm engaging in that particular hazard and then the monitoring? I think that's a critical part of this. And from a food safety standpoint, you have to do the monitoring. But I go back to your comment about, you know, listening to Randy Klatt in the background, going, where is the supervisor? Dave Darnley: Exactly. Peter Koch: So that's the monitoring piece. Right. So how do you monitor that the procedures and practices are being followed? Dave Darnley: Well, and I [00:46:00] think from the supervisory standpoint, you know, the number one thing is that the person has to be, you know, not in the office, not doing paperwork, not taking inventory, you know, being on the floor when processes and tasks are actually working and happening. So, you know, the supervisor needs to be, you know, an active part of the process. And even if it's not from doing it per say, again, this is the monitoring piece. This is just ensuring and making sure that, you know, all of the processes and procedures that they have and that they've trained on and written up and posted and whatnot, that they're actually being implemented properly and followed by the employees. If they're not, then it's you know, it's a coaching opportunity. And, you know, every once in a while I've gone through and I've seen where a supervisor will, you know, let somebody kind of go through a process, sort [00:47:00] of make the mistake, finish it up and then, you know, approach them. There may be times when you have to do that, but if there's any possible way that you can have that intervention be, you know, a little bit more immediate to ensure that the employee doesn't get hurt and does stay safe, because obviously you're noting that they're not doing something in the way that they're supposed to properly, if you will. I think you need to really get in there and, you know, take that coaching opportunity and make it immediate. Peter Koch: Yeah, it's a great idea. It's always more powerful to talk to the person about the event that's occurring than talking to them about the event or something that has already occurred in the past. And, you know, if you take if like, that old the old adage, if you see it, say it great. So if you see something that needs to be addressed, address it right then and there, if it's possible, because like you [00:48:00] identified, you can possibly prevent an injury from happening. I mean, how would it feel to stand there as the supervisor and watch with the intent to talk to the person after they're all done to make the point? Dave Darnley: Exactly. Peter Koch: And then they cut themselves right there in front of you because you didn't stop to have them put the cut glove on or didn't stop to have them put the guard on or something else. Dave Darnley: Exactly, and, you know, it comes down to style sometimes with management, but, you know, I mean, from my standpoint, it's you know, I would absolutely start with just the coaching piece and that the continuing education and the learning. And if, you know, it comes to the third time today, I walk by and you know, the gloves and gloves off, gloves and gloves off. And every time I walk by, you know, I got to tell you that we need to get the cut glove back. And then, you know, we need to have further conversation. You know, maybe there's actually a problem with it. It doesn't fit or it hurts or, you know, something else is [00:49:00] going on. But at some point, they're done? You know, there needs to be that enforcement. And another program that's, you know, kind of the part of the typical safety 101, if you will. Peter Koch: Yeah. And you highlighted something really interesting there, too, which doesn't happen, especially in some of your smaller establishments and even in some of the larger establishments that have a lot of turnover with their staff. Like how do you become a supervisor in a food service establishment? Typically you're really good at whatever task you've been given and then you're looking for more hours, more pay, more something. So you get to be moved into a supervisory role, but you don't really have a lot of training about how to be a supervisor. You might be really good at the task which you're supervising people to do, but you're not all that good at talking to someone about how they aren't doing the task correctly. So supervisor training actually would be another part of integrating safety [00:50:00] into that safety quality productivity triangle to make sure that it's part of your workflow. So how do you talk to how do you in the HACCP principles there when you establish corrective actions through your monitoring, how do you approach the individual and what are some tactics to do that so that you get the right result instead of making more mayhem in your kitchen? Dave Darnley: That's a great point. And again, it's funny, you know, a lot of this that we're talking about today and it's under the guise of the kitchen safety, but it applies, you know, almost universally. Peter Koch: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting how safety is not unique to a particular industry. The hazards might be unique to a particular industry, but some of the solutions, the how you get to the solution are fairly similar across the majority of the industry, that we interact with for sure. Dave Darnley: Absolutely, yeah, the [00:51:00] old adage, you know, safety is safety, it's there's tenants and principals and whatnot of what makes up good safety. But, you know, right as you go and equipment's different terminologies, different processes, different. But the basic principles of safety are, you know, they remain the same. Peter Koch: Right. And you could have that the same supervisory interaction can be the same to, you know, having worked in heavy industry, worked in construction, worked in food service, worked in the resort industry. I have numerous examples where I've had a supervisor or a manager come out of their office to something not going well. And the where the way they're approaching it is they're screaming and yelling and they're hollering and they're doing it right in the middle of everything. And you can see that like the head chef coming out or the restaurant manager coming out and hollering at the sous chef or the prep cook or whoever because it's not working the way it's supposed to go. Hollering directions, going back to their task and assuming that everything [00:52:00] is going to be hunky dory when they go back. And that's not the way to address the challenges. And there are going to be challenges. I mean, we talked about all the different hazards we could have spent the first 30 minutes of the podcast. You're just listing all of the different hazards that are in the kitchen. And we listed a bunch of them. But there are a bunch more that we haven't even addressed. But the solutions. Are similar, figure out what the hazard is, figure out how the individual is exposed to the hazard. How do we control their exposure so that they aren't going to be harmed by the hazard? How do we make sure that they're going to use it? The monitoring piece? What happens if we find them not using it? The corrective actions piece. And then it's documentation and discussion. So that process, they really like that has a piece that you talked about it does provide a good roadmap for [00:53:00] a restaurant manager or a business owner or even just a supervisor. So you can just you can same thing. You can take that as a supervisor and run your shift even if your business isn't doing it that way, you can run your shift the HACCP way. You can look at where the hazards are, how do we control it? How do we manage the exposures within that shift that you have and the team that you have to work with? Dave Darnley: Absolutely, absolutely. Peter Koch: And so we're getting here towards the end are there a couple more items that you wanted to that you want to leave our listeners with before we close? Dave Darnley: I guess one would be and it just kind of follows and builds on the HACCP idea, the formality and whatnot. Having been doing this for a little while, you know, I will sometimes be posed with the question [00:54:00] of what's the silver bullet? You know, what's the one thing that we can do to, you know, to be safe? Right. You know. And everybody wants everybody wants to, you know, just, you know, give me that one easy answer for how I make all of this work. You know, there's got to be and I usually, you know, start by letting people know that, in my opinion, there is, you know, no magic silver bullet per say. But probably the closest thing that I've come to experiencing that is that if the owner. Or the very top management person at an organization buys into safety, believes in safety and makes safety their top priority, if they insist that they are going [00:55:00] to not have injuries and not have losses, then guess what happens? That message trickles down to the next layer of management, which trickles down to supervision and depending on how top heavy the organization but you get the idea in trickles down to the individual workers. And I think that that is something that is important for everybody to grasp. You know, certainly if there's anybody listening to this that is in one of those types of positions and they know we don't have to tell them. They know how powerful their position is and they know how much their word and their wants and needs mean to the rest of the organization. If they want something done. It's going to find its way to get done. If it's important to the boss, it's going to be important [00:56:00] to the subordinates. Peter Koch: So I think that that is you know, that is what I would encourage is for those people that are in that position to take that to heart, because there's so many good reasons from both a human and a financial standpoint for safety to be that top priority. And if you can integrate it into the other aspects of what you're already doing, integrated into your existing quality program, integrated into production, then it becomes much more seamless, much more painless and much more effective. Peter Koch: Yeah, Dave Darnley: And for those folks that aren't in that position but, you know, you're listening. You say, well, I'm just one of the worker bees. You know, if you have a safety committee, these are the kinds of things that you can talk about relative to, you know, can we make an argument as a committee to upper management, to ownership as to what the return [00:57:00] on, you know, investment for a really good safety program would be and try to sell it from the grassroots up, if you will? Peter Koch: Yeah, that's a great idea. Dave DaRnley: Harder to do but, you know, it is a noble task. Peter Koch: And sometimes it is. Sometimes that safety committee can have great influence because as a business owner who you know, one of the other stats that comes out of that, the Restaurant Industry Factbook, there is the majority of restaurant owners started as like a dishwasher or started at the lowliest position. And they worked their way up. So they see productivity and quality because they might not have ever worked in a kitchen where safety is important. So their background and history and training might not have that. So the safety committee might actually be able to provide some information that could help guide upper management really well. So don't think you never have [00:58:00] influence. And on the other side, just that single supervisor who might be listening to this or that, just the individual who's listening to this, who might just work in the kitchen, your performance, your behavior, your focus on safety can have an effect on the people around you, and below you. So even if your manager might not have that focus, you still may be able to make choices that can keep you safe. Go back to that. That kid who was told to clean the hood, get it done. All right. I'm getting it done. I guarantee you, even if the supervisor wasn't there, somebody else, somebody else in that kitchen watched him climb up on the grill, guaranteed. Dave Darnley: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah. And somebody has to do the right thing. Somebody has to, you know, recognize the fact that that just is an absolute you know,  [00:59:00]a literal accident waiting to happen. Peter Koch: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So at the end of this day, as we think about kitchen safety overall, a couple of points I think that we touched on here are you need to be able to know where the hazards are. And you can't do that without actually being on the ground and looking at your facility and even sometimes outside of your facility, like the charcoal story that you talked about. And the sds sheet for gasoline didn't exist because no one looked at the storage shed where they kept the maintenance equipment. So not just within the kitchen itself, but go a little bit broader. Where do your staff interact? So understand the hazards, develop good procedures for that, and then think about how you communicate those procedures to your staff. What how does how [01:00:00] does a new person who walks into your kitchen for the first time as an employee that just got hired, they're coming on for the first time and you're handing them their apron or you're handing him their uniform. How do they know what those procedures are? How do they get trained and then from your existing staff or your returning staff? If it's a seasonal establishment, how do you do ongoing training to make sure that people continue to follow and understand all of the policies and procedures and practices that you have in place? So and you've said it so many times, David. You said a very eloquently that you have to integrate safety into what you're already doing in order for it to be successful. So how do you integrate that into training if you're training your cashier to cash out? What part of, what safety stuff do they have to worry about when you're doing food safety? How are you identifying some other personal [01:01:00] safety stuff that might be going on? How do you integrate safety into what you're already doing? It's a I think it's a great point to leave our listeners with. It's excellent. So that about wraps it up here for this week's Safety Expert Podcast. I really appreciate you being here, Dave, and sharing your expertise with us. So thanks very much for that. Dave Darnley: It's been a pleasure and I've enjoyed the podcast programs myself, I've listened to most of them, and I think you're doing a fantastic job and I really appreciate you having me today. Peter Koch: Well, thanks, David. Appreciate it. It really wouldn't be anything without having experts like you on the podcast to share their experience with us, because that's really what it's all about. So thanks again for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there, thank you very much. Today, we've been speaking with Dave Darnley, safety management consultant at MEMIC about safety in the commercial kitchen on the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. [01:02:00] If you have any questions for Dave or I'd like to hear more about our particular topic on our podcast, e-mail me at [email protected]. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find links to resources. For a deeper dive into this topic, check out our web site www.MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find the entire archive of our podcast episodes. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. If you haven't done so, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks for the review in the subscription, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing the show with a business associate friend or family member who you will think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Koch reminding [01:03:00] you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast is good, but using what you learned is even better.