4 Reasons you should take restaurant inspections seriously

Yes. Inspections. When was the last time you did a self-inspection at your restaurant? You don't want to end-up where Chipotle did. Do you? Below are 4 reasons why every restaurant should take inspections very seriously.

• Gain trust of customers: Food Safety is a topic that no restaurant would want to take a chance at. With whole new set of platforms in place for customers to review, poor quality food doesn’t just stop with customers not coming back, but with bad reviews. With negative reviews spreading faster than positive ones, a single negative review on food quality could make a potential customer overlook several positive reviews on other aspects. On the other hand, when you carry out food safety regularly and have the digital data to run analytics on it, you can make the restaurant inspection results public. Public display of restaurant inspection results gives a sense of reassurance to customers about the quality of food.

• Impact on production line: By carrying out regular checks on equipment and on their maintenance, you are significantly reducing the chances of their failure. This not only enables you to serve orders consistently, but also plan maintenance and the staff involved well in advance. If you know that the toaster is due service the next week, you can remove the corresponding items form the menu right before the start of the day, to avoid disappointment to customers.

• Compliance: With the recent e-coli outbreak at Chipotle, and the impact, inspections has become more important for restaurants, to see that they are maintaining strict food handling procedures right from procurement all the way until delivery. Compliance failures to food safety can be extremely expensive for restaurants and could result in irrevocable damage. While it may be possible for big brands to recover from the legal consequences, the brand name, once tarnished, takes a really long time to recover. On the flip side, when you’re regularly carrying out restaurant inspections, you’re compliant and ready for external inspection, be it from awarding agency or from FDA, anytime.

• Beyond food: Restaurant Inspections go beyond just monitoring the kitchen and the food quality. One should also have inspections to ensure physical safety of the premises and security. You could’ve spent thousands on that really sophisticated fire extinguishing system. But what use would it be of, if it weren’t serviced regularly and the pump wouldn’t work when it should?

All it takes, is to have a system (like Restaurant Inspector) in place to perform regular self inspections and make sure a bunch of check-boxes are ticked regularly. Education can be key here. Your staff must be well informed of food safety and the implications of lax which could prove very costly and more importantly, it could cost your brand and customers.

 

The first step to improve performance, would be to measure it right. You can now measure and track restaurant inspections using our simple easy to use mobile web solution Restaurant Inspector. With configurable questions and answers, customizable categories and multi user support, tracking restaurant inspections couldn’t be simpler. All you need is to provide your inspectors with a mobile / tablet and let them log their observations in the app. It’s time to get rid of the boring pen and paper checklist that makes performance tracking impossible. And the best part, there is analytics to alert you on important issues so you will never miss a thing.

Related Reads

• http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/chicago-revamps-restaurant-inspections-by-tapping-into-social-media/
• http://www.menucoverdepot.com/resource-center/articles/restaurant-health-inspections/
• http://www.restaurant.org/Manage-My-Restaurant/Food-Nutrition/Food-Safety/Nine-tips-to-prepare-for-a-health-inspection
• https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/restaurant-inspections-public-perceptions-vs.-reality