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Self-service

Food delivery, storage and display

Overview

A selection of foods that are displayed for a customer to serve themselves is an efficient way of serving many people at once, but has the potential to increase the risk of food contamination.

The risks are often associated with customers hygiene. For example, touching, coughing or sneezing on the food, mixing of one type of food with another, foods being out of temperature control, foreign objects falling into the food, and unclean serving utensils and equipment. 

As a food handler it is important to ensure that the displayed food is not being contaminated by customers or staff.

Rules for self-service foods

  • Supervise the display when customers are accessing food from the display.
  • Quickly remove the food if someone has contaminated the food.
  • Food must be kept under 5 °C or above 60 °C to avoid the temperature danger zone.
  • Always use a clean and sanitised thermometer to check the temperature at the centre of the food.
  • Never use a pie warmer or bain-marie to heat up cold food. They are only designed to keep hot food hot.
  • Throw away ’single-use’ items after using them once, including gloves, straws, paper towels, cups and plates.
  • Refresh food displays with completely fresh batches of food. Food poisoning bacteria can be transferred from an old batch of food to a new batch if the container has not been cleaned properly first.
  • Never re-use any self-service food.
  • Make sure that each food item or dish has its own serving utensil.
  • Ensure that the handles of the serving utensils do not touch the food as bacteria can be transferred from the customers hand to the utensil to the food.
  • Always remove utensils that have become contaminated from service and replace with a clean and sanitised utensil. This is especially important to prevent the transfer of allergens from one food to another.

Answer this practice question...

The most important reason to provide separate serving utensils for each food is it

Incorrect! Why is this?

Correct! Why is this?

You have the right to reject the delivery if you find the food unsafe

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