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 podcast@MEMIC.com. 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
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