Types of Health Code Violations and Associated Risks

Most Common Health Code Violations

As an operator or foodservice employee, food safety inspections can be irritating. On top of being picky about small health code violations, inspectors interrupt the flow of your kitchen and make it harder for you and your employees to keep the restaurant running smoothly. However, the inspections do serve a purpose – a purpose that not only benefits your customers (and you, if you ever eat outside your own kitchen), but one that also benefits your restaurant.

Why Food Code Violations Matter

Everyone has seen the negative press that comes from a foodborne illness outbreak at a restaurant, but the Chipotle incident with E. coli is a recent and infamous example. Not only did people get seriously sick from the restaurant's failure to protect them, but Chipotle's reputation – and profit – took a massive hit. The fast-casual restaurant's sales1 tumbled more than 30 percent that December – and if you don't have the same backing a massive company like Chipotle does, that could be a fatal blow. The best approach is to accept the food inspector is going to come by when you're not expecting it and use their help to make your restaurant2 as safe as possible.

Food Temperature & Storage Health Code Violations

Leaving food at improper temperatures for too long

Most foods, ranging from chicken and beef to salads and sushi, are only safe to eat if they have been maintained at an appropriate temperature. For foods that need to be refrigerated, that temperature is 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Once prepared and ready to be served, hot food must be maintained at a temperature greater than 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and because bacteria can grow rapidly when food is between those two temperatures, that range is often referred to as the danger zone.

Improper storage

Walk-in refrigerators and storage fridges are susceptible to serious restaurant health code violations for two common mistakes. First, operators will frequently add warm or hot items to a refrigerated storage area without considering that the refrigerator might not be able to keep up with the change in temperature. If your cold storage area is trying to hold food at 35 degrees and you add a hot pot of soup for later use, the ambient heat put off by the pot will increase demand on the refrigerator's system and could increase the temperature of the surrounding food to an unsafe level. Refrigerators need time to recover their temperature after having new items added to them, and operators are responsible for ensuring their food is safe, even if it's in the fridge. Food placed inside refrigerated storage must be balanced to ensure nothing is outside a safe temperature or face a food code violation and safety hazard.

Dripping is the other chief storage related restaurant health code violation. If you store chicken in the fridge above a pan of beef, drippings from the chicken might contain bacteria that would need to be heated to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, while beef only needs to reach 145 degrees. The 20 degree discrepancy leaves room for bacteria in the chicken, such as salmonella, to survive and endanger your customers. To counter this, store your food, especially meats, with the most dangerous on the bottom, so any drippings are less heat-tolerant than the food they have dripped onto. Beef or fish dripping into chicken will still be cooked at 165 degrees, hot enough to kill all dangerous bacteria. We recommend storing vegetables on top, followed by cooked meats and seafood, then raw seafood, beef, pork, and finally raw chicken, which should always be on the bottom. Additionally, storage containers that are well-sealed can help prevent cross-contamination.

Sanitization

Using the right chemicals

The difference between clean and sanitized is incredibly important in a restaurant. Clean might look good to your eyes, but the health inspector and, more importantly, salmonella, won't care if a surface is clean if it isn't also sanitized. Sanitization requires potent cleansers that can kill almost all bacteria on any given surface, and using only soap and water is a health code violation. Ensure your cleaning processes include sanitizing chemicals anywhere dangerous bacteria might live.

Avoiding contamination

Cross-contamination and personal hygiene problems are common health code violations. The inspector will check to ensure you have appropriate handwashing procedures in place so your employees don't inadvertently contaminate your food. Any time a chef comes into contact with raw meat, they should thoroughly wash their hands before touching anything else. Cutting boards and utensils must also be thoroughly sanitized after touching a potential contaminant.

Proper handwashing techniques

In addition to sanitizing equipment and cooking surfaces at the right time, operators need to wash their hands the right way. A quick 5-second dip in warm water and a splash of soap isn't going to eliminate all the potentially dangerous bacteria that can live on your hands, and letting your chefs use a subpar handwashing technique is another health code violation.

To thoroughly clean hands, follow these steps:

  1. Begin up near your elbows, scrubbing downward with soap and warm water.
  2. Scrub downwards to your hands, removing all debris and ensuring every bit is scrubbed.
  3. Clean underneath your fingernails with a nail brush.
  4. To ensure thoroughness, each handwashing should last at least 20 seconds.

Equipment

Local health regulators will have different specifics that must be met before they'll sign off on your restaurant equipment, but one general rule is that all equipment must be NSF certified. This certification ensures that the piece you purchase can be cleaned to a satisfactory degree, that bacteria won't survive inside cracks in the material, and other specifications that ensure customer safety. If it's not NSF certified, you can't use it in your kitchen.

Because health regulations vary from district to district across the country, we can't give you an exact rundown of what to do to ensure your restaurant is both safe for customers and safe from the health inspectors' discerning eye, but these are a few good places to start. In the age of social media, even minor incidents can explode into public scandals, and restaurants with a reputation for being unclean are not going to fare well.

  1. CNBC Report on Chipotle Outbreak. Accessed October 2019.
  2. ToastTab Health Code Violations. Accessed October 2019.