As states slowly reopen their economies around the U.S., the food service industry faces a new health and safety challenge—physical distancing. Restaurant owners, food service workers and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agree that social distancing among food service workers isn’t always possible. Kitchens are often crowded and busy, with little free space to maneuver in and little time to adjust while moving around.
How can restaurants reopen their dining rooms, even at partial capacity, while protecting employees and guests? The FDA issued general guidelines for food service businesses in early April. In our headquarters state of Texas, the governor’s office updated its restaurant safety checklist on May 5, a few days ahead of restaurants being allowed to reopen dining rooms at 25% capacity.
The FDA’s guidelines say that employees should practice physical distancing when possible. The guidelines from both the FDA and Texas focus on the need for food service employees to follow best practices for hand hygiene, face masks, frequent cleanings and disinfection—especially when maintaining six feet of space between employees is not possible.
Rigorous Covid-19 safety practices bring new challenges
Food service already has unique safety requirements like cooler temperature monitoring; cleaning and sanitation of food prep, storage and serving areas; and regular thorough handwashing to prevent the spread of foodborne illnesses. Now, restaurants that plan to reopen must adhere to additional rules issued by their states.
In Texas, those include:
· Installing a hand sanitizing station at the restaurant entrance.
· Ensuring that employees have access to hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, hand soap and paper towels.
· Requiring employees and contractors to wash their hands when they arrive and “between interactions with customers.”
· Considering requiring employees and contractors to wear cloth face masks that cover the nose and mouth.
· Frequent cleaning of door handles, restrooms and other areas.
· Cleaning and disinfecting tables and seating as customers leave.
Texas’ guidelines also recommend that when 10 or more workers are present, one of them should be completely or partly focused on enforcing health and safety practices. For restaurants with fewer workers on-site, and even for large restaurants where a rush or workers calling in sick might leave a team without a safety monitor, inexpensive IoT tools can help maintain worker and guest safety.
IoT-connected devices can help food service businesses follow safety best practices
Even before the new coronavirus pandemic, restaurants and other food service businesses were adopting IoT tools to save employee time while ensuring quality and safety. For example, restaurant sensors like wireless temperature sensors can take and log readings of cooler temperatures around the clock without the need to pull employees away from their main tasks to manually record temperatures. This real-time temperature monitoring saves time on food safety compliance and can also help managers pinpoint problems.
For example, if cooler temperatures are out of compliance overnight, did employees forget to close the door before they closed the store? Or if temperatures are trending upward, it may be time for a service call to inspect the cooler.
Now, with new safety protocols in place, remote monitoring of equipment and food storage temperatures can reduce the need for workers to move around so much in the kitchen, possibly bringing them into close contact with co-workers. Remote temperature monitoring also frees workers to do other required safety tasks like disinfecting tables and chairs between customers.
Internet-connected handwashing stations can also help food service workers stay safer and comply with new rules. For example, some hand hygiene IoT solutions log each time an employee uses a soap dispenser to create a complete record of the staff’s hand hygiene on each shift. Others allow employees access to certain areas after they’ve washed their hands.
Because workers and customers alike will be using more hand sanitizer, hand soap and paper towels now than before the pandemic began, keeping hand-washing and sanitizing stations stocked is a safety issue. “Smart washroom” dispensers with level sensors can alert staff before they run out, so staff are never stuck without a way to clean their hands.
Another way the IoT can ensure that food service businesses maintain hand hygiene compliance is by protecting their supplies. Shrinkage and loss can happen in any workplace, and many health and safety basics are hard to find.
For example, the hand sanitizer shortage that began right after the pandemic began has now rippled out to a shortage of the supplies needed to make hand sanitizer, including alcohol and even plastic pump bottles. Small, inexpensive stick-on RFID tracking tags can help restaurants keep track of their supplies and show managers what is onsite with a glance at a dashboard on their phone or computer.
Remote video monitoring can help protect supplies, too. Real-time video monitoring gives managers a way to verify that staffers are following cleaning and sanitation protocols and wearing face masks, even when the manager is offsite.
Reopening restaurants with heightened safety protocols is a major challenge with high stakes. Because wireless IoT sensors can be installed in minutes, they can help restaurants and other food service companies protect their employees’ and guests’ health now and going forward in the “new normal.”
About the author
Ray Almgren, COO, Swift Sensors.
Ray Almgren is the chief operating officer at Swift Sensors, a developer of cloud-based wireless sensor systems for industrial applications. Prior to his role at Swift Sensors, Ray was the vice president of marketing at National Instruments. Ray received his bachelor's of science in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Ray is the founder and current board member of FIRST in Texas, a member of the National FIRST Executive Advisory Board, and has served on several engineering advisory boards including The University of Texas at Austin, Southern Methodist University and Tufts University.
