We’re in a bit of a waiting game. My wife and I are expecting our second child at any moment (for real, today’s the due date). For our first child, Jack (right, exactly as shown), planning was much less of an issue. 
We had him at home, didn’t have much else to worry about except making sure our dog was out of the way and we could deal with him coming whenever he was ready. Planning is much more part of the situation this time: we’re using a Chapel Hill-based birth center (40 min away) and have a calling tree of folks who will look after Jack once things start happening.
We had a midwife appointment today and following the check-in we hit a favorite restaurant of ours, Maggiano’s in Durham.
This was all part of the evolving plan.
We’re usually pretty good about putting together a menu and doing a big grocery shop once a week but with all of our baby uncertainty we’ve been pretty lax in the food planning department. Maggiano’s has a great deal where you get two entrees for the price of one: one to eat there and a refrigerated helping to heat up later. Even better about the deal is that I can seldom eat my in-restaurant meal so I end up with two or three leftover meals. All for what seems ridiculous like a ridiculous price of $12.95. Good value and we don’t have to do a lot of meal planning over the next couple of days.
We’ve participated in this deal on a few occasions but this time we were presented with a take-out insert card by our server with a 10 second blurb describing that we now had reheating instructions (below, exactly as shown). Being a food safety communication nerd, after she left our table I grabbed the card and scoured it for times/temps and anything I could see about safe handling.
I was a bit disappointed.
The card says to cook until “thoroughly hot” but doesn’t say anything about what temperature that might be, or that a patron might want to use a thermometer to verify it was hot enough. 
Going to the expense of printing and distributing the insert cards is a great step. An even better step would be to engage folks into what they can do to reduce risks – not only does this start a dialogue with customers but it can help restaurants and food providers distinguish themselves in a competitive marketplace.
Brae Surgeoner led a project a few years ago when we were both at Guelph looking at this issue. Her study showed that a safe food handling label for take-out food was a promising value-added investment for restaurant operators as long as the stickers were used consistently and employees supported the initiative. Check out the abstract below for more.
Assessing management perspectives of a safe food-handling label for casual dining take-out food
01.oct.09
Food Protection Trends, Vol 29, No 10, pages 620-625
Brae V. Surgeoner, Tanya MacLaurin, Douglas A. Powell
Abstract
Faced with the threat of food safety litigation in a highly competitive industry, foodservice establishments must take proactive steps to avoid foodborne illness. Consumer demand for convenience food, coupled with evidence that consumers do not always engage in proper food-safety practices, means that take-out food from casual dining restaurant establishments can lead to food safety concerns. A prescriptive safe food-handling label was designed through a Delphi-type exercise. A purposive sample of 10 foodservice managers was then used to evaluate the use of the label on take-out products. Semi-structured in-depth interviews focused on the level of concern for food safety, the value of labelling take-out products, perceived effectiveness of the provided label, and barriers to implementing a label system. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed, and the data was interpreted using content analysis to identify and develop overall themes and sub-themes related to the areas of inquiry. It was found that labeling is viewed as a beneficial marketing tool by which restaurants can be differentiated from their competitors based on their proactive food safety stance.