This article is brought to you by Ready Training Online.

When it comes to food, news travels fast. If you have a great menu, word will quickly get around town and draw in customers. But if there is a food safety issue at one of your locations, your reputation can be damaged even faster.

“A lapse in food safety can cause you to take a big hit in your sales volume. It takes a really long time to regain the customer’s trust. You build up that trust over time, and you can lose it overnight,” said Tom Hart, director of business development at Ready Training Online (RTO).

It’s critical that retailers make food safety a top priority in every step of the kitchen and foodservice workflow, Hart said. “If it’s not part of your consistent practices throughout the entire day, then that’s dangerous. It needs to be second nature, and you see that happen in good operations. Retailers cannot afford to take shortcuts, especially when your competition now isn’t just other convenience store operators, it’s QSRs and restaurants too.”

Some of the top food safety components retailers should focus on, according to Hart, are personal hygiene, cleanliness of the entire store, proper temperature control and avoiding cross contamination.

“Personal hygiene and store cleanliness—from the restrooms to the equipment and back-of-house areas—are some of the most basic and visible things that customers will make decisions on, even subconsciously, so if you can’t get those right then you already have a problem,” he said. “Your employees need to understand that you can get sick from food very quickly—so if you are not staying on top of these four components throughout the entire day, then you can’t run a foodservice operation.”

But labor and hiring challenges, lean staff during shifts and busy, high-pressure kitchen environments can mean that food safety practices might fall to the wayside—which could lead to the loss of both customers and employees. “Employees know when something's not right when preparing food, and the best people don’t want to work at an operation where they’re not practicing food safety. When a team has solid food safety practices, they take pride in that and are proud of the work they’re doing. So food safety absolutely has an impact on employee retention. In order to keep the best people, you need to operate at a high level,” he said.

A critical component of ensuring both food safety practices and increasing retention is employee training. “Food safety training gives employees the best practices for how to make it part of their workflow. We try to make our training very realistic and reinforce the why behind the need for food safety measures, as well as emphasize the consequences of the unsafe practices,” said Hart. “If there are unsafe behaviors in the operation, they need to know the harm that they can personally cause from a bad decision or from cutting corners.”

RTO offers a full menu of food safety training, from courses on how to sanitize surfaces, ensure proper temperature control and use equipment to food handling certifications and kitchen manager exams following FDA food codes.

This is the first in a two-part series from Ready Training Online. Look for part two, covering personal safety and security, on Thursday.