Food Poisoning Outbreak in a Restaurant

Synopsis

This assignment is about a food poisoning outbreak. Approximately 100 guests who attended the previous night the dinner became ill. Most of the guests presumed that they were ill because they had a chicken dish which was prepared and served by the Eleni Restaurant.

The hotel management called the local health department to investigate the outbreaks. The health officers came to the conclusion that the outbreak was caused by the chicken. Furthermore, they found out unsanitary conditions and cockroaches in the kitchen. These facts created a serious problem for the hotel. The management has to overcome the so-called crisis.

The hotel must confront a kind of inefficiency from the side of the management. One of the major symptoms was to provide proper sanitation training program to the kitchen personnel. In addition to the above, it was found that the kitchen personnel did not have the proper training concerning the cleaning and sanitation procedures and especially insect and rodent control so to prevent the food poisoning outbreak.

The hotel management had received several inspection reports from the local health department, which were not taken into consideration seriously. The management should have evaluated suppliers before coming to an agreement with them. The suppliers should be evaluated by the applying criteria such as: sanitation policies, size and service, staff and labor relations, products and prices and reputation. In such circumstance, the hotel management should have given warning for the food poisoning outbreak to the kitchen supplier, but the hotel did not take any measures to face the problem.

There is a series of effective preventative steps that should be taken into consideration:

Step A. Benefits of a Sanitation Program. A comprehensive sanitation program costs money for the hotel, but lastly, it provides an immediate payback to the hotel. Some of the benefits will be: protection of customer and staff health, satisfaction of customers, but mainly reduction in the cost and increase in the effectiveness of cleaning and sanitizing procedures.

Step B. Establish Rules of Safe Food Service. It is important the training program to be in a language that employees can understand. The management should write down some rules that should be followed by the staff.

Step C. Establish Training Outcomes for Food Service Employees. Untrained employees work against the goals and objectives of the hotel’s establishment. As a result, the management should train its employees.

Step D. Success – The Bottom Line. If a hotelier builds the most expensive facility with the most modern equipment, but does not train its personnel effectively and efficiently, the hotelier cannot expect to succeed. A well-organized sanitation program does not cost much; it pays in increased customer satisfaction levels and reduced risks.