The National Food Policy Conference took place in Washington, D.C. on September 23rd, 2010 where Dr. Elizabeth Hagen, Secretary for Food Safety, outlined three focus areas for the industry. She spoke about prevention, tools, and people as being the three areas where the agency would be focusing their efforts in the coming months. Prevention more or less boils down to being proactive as opposed to reactive. For a restaurant, being proactive and practicing prevention first requires having the right tools and resources available to management and staff. By implementing a paging system such as JTECH’s ServAlert®, food orders spend less time waiting in the kitchen and more time at the table. This isn’t just about serving food quickly to please the customer, this is about safe food handling which has been entrusted to restaurant owners.

Trust is defined as “reliance on the integrity, strength and ability of a person or thing.” When someone walks into a restaurant, they do so with the trust that their food will be safely handled. Safe food handling extends far beyond keeping raw meat separate from fresh vegetables. The food preparation and consumption timeline is important for protecting people from food borne illnesses and for reducing the risk of other food related illnesses. This means food needs to be promptly transferred from the back of the house to the front. ServAlert pagers are ideal for notifying staff of deliverable orders thereby reducing delivery wait times. In addition, JTECH’s paging systems allow for notification to management if orders are not picked up in a timely fashion. Prevention requires all members of the restaurant be on the same team working towards protecting the health of those guests who have placed their trust in your organization.