NZ restaurant bans doggy bags, citing health and safety risk

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Douglas Powell

If you go to a restaurant and have leftovers, you ask for a doggy bag.

Any restaurant that knows food safety will bring the clamshell to the table: no one wants your germs back in the kitchen.

A Kapiti Coast restaurant has banned doggy bags, citing health and safety.

“If someone takes food home, doesn’t heat it properly and gets sick, they’ll probably blame us,” Phil Ryan, owner of The Social at Kapiti Lights, said.

“Some people got upset they couldn’t take a burger home, but it’s all about food safety.”

But the Ministry of Primary Industries is clear that food taken home from a restaurant becomes the responsibility of the diner, and Kapiti Coast District Council, along with other councils in the Wellington region, said it had no rules against doggy bags.

The ministry’s website says: “Operators may refuse to let leftovers be taken home because they run the risk their food could be mishandled and then blamed if someone becomes ill.

“If you take the food away, the safety of that food is up to you.”

However, Ryan said most restaurants par-cooked their food, so customers could be reheating their leftovers for a third time, leaving them at risk of getting sick.

“I would rather have a bad review for keeping people safe than making people sick. It’s not about ripping people off, honestly.”

The Social is not alone in being wary of letting customers take leftovers home. Duck Creek restaurant, in Pauatahanui, tries to stop diners taking chicken away.

“We strongly discourage that,” head chef Dean McFarland said. “If it’s a steak or some chips that’s fine, but chicken can go off too quickly.”

Are restaurant doggy-bags legal in Australia?

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Douglas Powell

Sally Santacruz of the Australian Institute of Food Safety writes that many people consider it their right to take home any food leftover after a restaurant meal.

Many Australian restaurants have begun to ban the popular custom of allowing diners to take home uneaten food – but this doesn’t necessarily mean the practice is illegal. There’s currently no law in Australia that would prevent restaurants from offering their customers take-away containers for leftover food.

According to each state’s food board, it’s actually up to the restaurant, but they do recommend erring on the side of caution. These authorities suggest that the containers be dated and the customer is given instructions on how to safely store and reheat the food. Some restaurants are taking this advice a step further and asking those who wish to take home leftovers to sign a legal waiver.

Although some restaurants may be reluctant to provide take-away boxes, consumers in Australia are legally permitted to doggy-bag their own meals if they’re willing to run the risk of food poisoning.

We delved into the issue over a decade ago in southern Ontario (that’s in Canada).

At the time our work was published, I said, “With leftovers, people need information the moment they pull that container or clamshell package from the fridge. How long has it been in the fridge? Is it still safe? Our approach was to provide practical information, right on the container.”

We concluded 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.

“We strive to provide the right food safety message in the right setting,” Powell said. “Hand washing information should go over sinks and the back door of toilet stalls. Food preparation information should go in the back kitchen. Stickers with safe food handling information should go on the clamshell containers that people take home and put in the fridge. That’s where the learning moment is.”

Also, always bring the clamshell to the table and let customers add their food, rather than taking the plate – and the customer’s germs – into the kitchen.

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

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.

A doggy bag? Only if you sign this legal waiver at top chef’s brasserie

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Douglas Powell

A diner who asked for a ‘doggy bag’ to take home her half-finished meal was surprised to be asked to sign a legal waiver.

The complicated form is being issued to customers at a restaurant part-owned by celebrity chef Raymond Blanc before they can take any of their food away with them.

Brasserie Blanc in Oxford refused to allow the diner to take home her unfinished tarte flambee – a pizza-style dish – before she agreed to indemnify them ‘from and against all claims, losses, liabilities, damage, costs, charges, fines, penalties and expenses’ that could arise from her eating it at home.

The restaurant said the document was designed to stop diners from suing it if they took the £11.80 dish home, failed to store or refrigerate it properly and became ill. But managers admitted they had never been sued.

Written in convoluted legalistic jargon – and bad English – the ‘indemnity form’ asks diners to ‘confirm that I will be taking away [the food or drink] into the house/home (“the premises”) for the consumption (“function”)’.

It continues: ‘I and my guests will then be able to consumer [sic] this food or drink.’ But the diner must fulfil two requirements.

Firstly, they must ‘ensure that all applicable licensing laws are complied with’ and ‘ensure that no sales of liquor are made on the premises’.

Secondly, they must: ‘Observe and comply with all legal requirements relating to food and its preparation, food safety and health and safety, together with any other requirements affecting catering premises and/or premises for the preparation of food (as defined by the Food Safety Act 1990, whether statutory or otherwise) and all new relating Regulation.’

Brasserie Blanc said the form is a standard one provided by environmental health officers and used by many restaurants. A spokesman said: ‘Although we don’t have to use it, staff are strongly recommended to as we don’t have a licence to serve takeaway food.’

Restaurant critic Richard Harden, co-founder of Harden’s London Restaurants guides, said: ‘I would never ask for a doggy bag in the first place. But even if I were to, I don’t see the use of this form.

‘I’ve never heard of such a thing. This is just more nonsense designed to interfere with the operation of common sense.’

Assessing management perspectives of a safe food-handling label for casual dining take-out food 

Food Protection Trends, Vol 29, No 10, pages 620-625 

Brae V. Surgeoner, Tanya MacLaurin, Douglas A. Powell 

 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.

Stick by the dates to prevent barfing

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Douglas Powell

What does a veterinary/public health student do when his mom is in town from South America? Takes her, his wife, sister and sister’s fiancé to Olive Garden, because “when you are here, your are family."

Maybe throw in a little Bed, Bath and Beyond (it’s across the parking lot).

When it was time to put our leftovers in boxes, not only did the server bring the boxes to our table to do the transfer – which avoids the risk of cross-contamination in the Olive Garden kitchen – they also wrote the date on it (right, exactly as shown). However, multi-state chains can do better when it comes to food safety.

Powell et al. developed this label (left) years ago. It lists the temperature at which the box should be stored, reheated, and guidance on when to discard. I may know these things, but maybe not everyone does because, as Steven Seagal said in Under Siege 2, “assumption is the mother of all f**k ups.”

The last thing I want is a barfing mom, or barfing pregnant wife, or barfing sister or barfing sister’s fiancé. One barfing dog is enough.

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.

Top 10 things that get lodged in the throat, Australia version

Posted on March 6, 2011 by Douglas Powell

Warning: avoid chunks of plastic when eating food from take-away containers.

Maybe that’s an additional warning required for those Styrofoam containers or clamshells, popular for leftovers and take-away food.

We developed safe handling labels for take-out food and showed those stickers can help restaurants and food providers distinguish themselves in a competitive marketplace. But now researchers report in the Medical Journal of Australia two separate cases where women accidentally swallowed a large chunk of plastic, which became stuck in their throat and required a trip to hospital to have it removed, after eating food straight out of a take-away container, which had "softened" as a result of their meal being heated up in a microwave oven.

Dr Chris Pokorny from Sydney’s Liverpool Hospital, and colleagues, write,

"Given that take-away food containers are widely used, these cases highlight the need for care to be taken when heating food in such containers and then consuming directly from them."

The doctors warn the plastic softens during the heating process, and could be sliced through during the act of cutting up a bite-sized portion of food.

The paper also lists those items which most commonly get lodged in the throat, headed by a wad of improperly chewed food (17.1 per cent) then coins (15.6 per cent), fish bones (12.6 per cent), dental prostheses (8.6 per cent) and chicken bones (6 per cent).

Supermarket Guru says stickers on clamshells a good food safety idea to go

Posted on October 24, 2009 by Douglas Powell

Supermarket Guru picked up on our food safety stickers for takeout food and suggested it was one way retailers could turn food safety into a competitive advantage, and wrest takeout business from nearby restaurants.

Which was exactly one of our thoughts when we began experimenting with food safety stickers about five years ago.

While SupermarketGuru.com doesn’t know the full details of their proposed label, we suggest that besides basic date and serving information, it also clearly states whether a food might contain allergens like peanuts or gluten. In our opinion, supermarkets have failed so far to truly differentiate themselves in prepared foods and easy takeout. This is one value-added step that could help food stores retain the takeout volume that fell in their laps when the economy cratered, and people curbed their restaurant visits. They didn’t really earn the windfall, but they got it, and now they have to address consumer concerns about food safety in order to burnish their image as takeout sources.

Perhaps a special opportunity for this approach is in the small-format stores modeled after Tesco’s Fresh & Easy, which emphasize takeout offerings, and are already battling convenience stores, which are stepping up their meal programs. Safe food-handling stickers could add professionalism to the displays and confidence in consumers, and make the prepared foods section a more frequent destination.

We’ll work with anyone who is interested in developing the sticker concept for their own food business — large or small. Any new sticker would have a different phone number and website than those depicted (below) and would be based on research tailored to a specific operation.

Safe food handling labels on take-out containers can help restaurants stand apart in the marketplace

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Douglas Powell

As take-out food continues to increase in popularity, new research from Kansas State University has found that safe handling labels can help restaurants and food providers distinguish themselves in a competitive marketplace.

"With leftovers, people need information the moment they pull that container or clamshell package from the fridge," said Doug Powell, a K-State associate professor of food safety. "How long has it been in the fridge? Is it still safe? Our approach was to provide practical information, right on the container."

Powell, along with former graduate student Brae Surgeoner and Tanya MacLurin of the University of Guelph in Canada, designed a safe food handling label for take-out food after consulting numerous experts and consumers (right; phone number and url don’t work anymore — dp). They then worked with 10 restaurants in Ontario to provide food safety stickers for take-out food and subsequently interviewed managers about the utility of the stickers.

For the purpose of this research, takeout was defined as food procured from a casual dining restaurant — in other words, a sit-down restaurant — but eaten elsewhere, including food ordered as takeout and leftover food packaged to be taken home.

The researchers concluded that such 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.

"We strive to provide the right food safety message in the right setting," Powell said. "Hand washing information should go over sinks and the back door of toilet stalls. Food preparation information should go in the back kitchen. Stickers with safe food handling information should go on the clamshell containers that people take home and put in the fridge. That’s where the learning moment is."

The results are published in the October 2009 issue of Food Protection Trends.

The abstract is below.

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.

Leftovers should not be left outside – or you may barf

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Douglas Powell

Nine children and three women from a village in the Galilee who attended a wedding celebration Sunday ended up Monday evening at the emergency room with diarrhea, fierce stomachache and vomiting. The Jerusalem Post reports that seven of the children and two of the women had to be hospitalized for observation.

They were diagnosed with food poisoning tracked back to the "doggie bags" taken and eaten at home. Amil Aga, epidemiological supervisor at the hospital, reached the conclusion that the leftovers had been left outside rather than in refrigeration for several hours until the extended family got home.

Hospital director-general Dr. Masad Barhoom warned people that during the hot summer months, store raw and prepared food under proper conditions to reduce the risk of food poisoning.

(The sticker, right, was a prototype; phone number and web site won’t work; but we can come up with a new one — dp).

Stickers source watermelons to California farm

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Douglas Powell

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that at a farm in Manteca, in San Joaquin County, workers smack labels onto watermelons freshly cut from the vine, each sticker bearing a unique string of letters and numbers that identifies where they were harvested.

Ryan Van Groningen of Van Groningen & Sons Farms, which sells watermelons under the Yosemite Fresh brand, said,

"With food safety as big as it is, we can give each watermelon its own code so a consumer can check on the Internet to see where it is grown.”

This new code, called the HarvestMark, is being developed by the Redwood City startup YottaMark Inc. at a time when Congress is considering food-safety legislation that could make some type of tracking system mandatory.

In advance of any legal mandate, a few growers have started putting HarvestMark codes on products like plastic-packaged grapes and strawberries, as well as watermelons.

The idea is to enable a consumer to type the 16-digit tracking code into a locator field at HarvestMark.com to learn where the product was grown. Depending on the grower’s records and what the farm chooses to reveal, the system could detail the date and part of the field where the product originated.

Great idea.

A decade ago, I advised the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers – whose cluster tomatoes still dominate supermarket shelves in Florida in the middle of summer – to do something similar, to market their food safety efforts directly to the concerned consumer.

For other produce producers, forget government babysitters and the non-niceties of offending other growers … growers who maybe aren’t so good at food safety.

Go further. Put a url on the sticker so concerned shoppers can check out a web site with video, not just about where a commodity was grown, but about food safety standards, and real-time test results for water quality and product sampling.

And then market it.

Stickers for takeaway food a hit in Dubai

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Douglas Powell

Food such as takeout or takeaway, that is initially prepared in a restaurant but is consumed in an individual’s home, may be a venue to target with safe-food handling messages. Earlier this decade, both Chicago-based Francesca Restaurants and Boston-based Buca Di Beppo Restaurants reported anecdotal success placing food safety labels on containers of takeout food.

In 2004, my group undertook research to:

• examine restaurant managements’ experience of using a safe food-handling label on takeout food;
• explore managements’ food safety concerns;
• determine the value of consumer safe-food handling labels to managers;
• establish perceived label effectiveness; and,
• identify challenges with implementation.

For our study, we defined take-out as food procured from a casual dining restaurant (i.e. sit-down restaurant) but eaten elsewhere, including food ordered as take-out and leftover food packaged to be taken home. The label we developed is right (above) and left (note, the phone line and web site don’t work anymore).

The research paper describing that work has been accepted by a peer-reviewed scientific journal and will be published in the near future.

However, the public health types in Dubai discovered over the weekend the same thing we found: most consumers and restaurateurs like the idea.

Our bites.ksu.edu Dubai correspondent contacted Ben and me about stickers on takeaway, and we sent along what we had developed. Today, the Khaleej Times reports,

The Dubai Municipality is planning to encourage all restaurants in the emirate to issue advisories to consumers on safe handling of takeaway food.

The decision follows a similar initiative by a popular south Indian restaurant group that attaches red stickers to its takeaway bags at its two outlets in Dubai. A municipality official applauded the group’s move and said the civic body intended to support such initiatives by other restaurants as well.

Director of Food Control Department, Khalid Mohammed Sherif, told the Khaleej Times,

“We are encouraging more and more food outlets to put such messages along with takeaway food to ensure that the customer handles the food properly. We will be providing all of them with modified instructions for customers to handle food taken away.”

He said the modified versions of the advisories will include the temperature at which food items have to be stored and the duration within which they have to be consumed, depending on the types of ingredients.

Below is a draft of the information intended for consumers.

barfblog

safe food from farm to fork

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