Who's Accountable? Temperature Monitoring In Restaurants

In the restaurant world (and for that matter, food service in general), there are important decisions to make as to who's accountable for temperature checks and how accountability and responsibility tie in with daily duties, from busy owners to stressed counter-staff. If an owner spends 70% of their day in house, does that make them more accountable than a cook (who will spend 100% of their workday amidst the storage equipment)? The answer seems clear cut, but in a holistic sense, a multi-tiered effort is the ideal setup for prevention of temperature-related disasters and mishaps. 

Counter-Staff and Cashiers

Accountability Level: Low

Exposure to Temperature/Equipment Control: Low

Unfortunately, counter staff and/or cashiers are attentive servants of customers. The constant wave of customer service, fulfilling orders, handling cash, and the etc. of this position creates a time-share problem for these employees. Is their time best spent on checking equipment and manually logging temperatures, or should the customers occupy the majority of their time? The answer is clearly the latter, and the lifeblood of a restaurant will always be the paying customers. Keep counter-staff and cashiers in their zone, and distribute the temperature-related duties to other personnel whenever possible. This should be your last line of defense, and depending on your business model, these employees may or may not be capable of performing quality-control checks of any kind.

Day-to-Day Managers

Accountability Level: High

Exposure to Temperature/Equipment Operation: High

Let's be honest. There are many scattered duties for restaurant managers, and rolling through the list might become cumbersome. With that said, their duties in the back-of-the-house are extremely important to the survival of the restaurant. These "senior" employees should have a solid understanding of the dangers of temperature control, and should have the ability to detect the warning signs of temperature-related failures. These include high-level inspections of refrigerators, freezers, walk-ins, and pantries, and ensuring the operational quality of the refrigeration/freezer units. Given their exposure to these areas and their job description, they should be held closely accountable for these issues. 

Owners

Accountability Level: Maximum

Exposure to Temperature/Equipment Operation: Low

And of course, the owner faces a bit of a quandary for this issue. They should hold themselves accountable at all levels for temperature related problems, but are usually unfortunately occupied with a wide-reaching list of responsibilities, both in-house and outside of the business. If you're an owner, you'd probably rationalize that your time is not always best spent in the kitchen or checking equipment. You might even say "that's why I hired a manager, silly!". But as we outlined before, managers may be busy with other duties and may forget to take daily or weekly temperature readings from the designated areas. The management of personnel is an important qualification for a new management hire, but operational effectiveness of restaurant equipment and overall upkeep might be a harder skill to find for this particular position. If you can't find this "purple squirrel" manager, and you're extremely busy with larger decisions and responsibilities, who's left? It's one thing to be accountable, it's another thing to be proactively managing these issues to ensure that an employee is completing them. 

But this is all talk, and the truth (as always) lies in automation. It's one thing to say that someone should be held accountable for temperature-related problems and equipment checks, but are they actually fulfilling these duties in a timely fashion to prevent a disaster or problem? Can you rely on managers and counter-staff for a weekly report of temperatures and equipment checks? Can owners allocate precious time out of their day to ensure that other employees have completed these tasks? Of course not. 

An automated temperature monitoring system is never preoccupied with customers, management of employees, or accounting, and doesn't need a reminder to do the job. For all of the mishaps and mistakes in restaurants, the temperature-related disasters can't be blamed on counter-staff or managers. In the end, the responsibility falls on the owner to proactively purchase a monitoring system to simplify the entire process. This isn't about buying unnecessary luxuries, it's about redistributing the daily responsibilities of a restaurant. Automation helps employees, and employees are helped by automation. It's a self-fulfilling purchase to say the least, and the wave of products available makes this (more than) affordable.