FOOD HYGIENE STREETS AHEAD
How do street food vendors manage to serve long queues of customers with sandwiches, snacks and full meals from compact stalls without compromising hygiene standards? Rebecca Blake from Tork manufacturer SCA explains how cleaning and hygiene can be optimised on a cramped market stall.
During the summer months, an increasing number of food vendors take to the streets to sell a selection of meals to outdoor crowds in markets, stadiums and festivals.
No longer do these vendors simply sell hot dogs, kebabs and burgers. Nowadays the hungry diner-on-the-go can buy anything from a pad Thai to a raclette, or a curry to paella from an outdoor stall.
All food businesses have a responsibility to protect the items they sell from contamination under food safety legislation. In fact, public safety is one of the four key requirements of all food businesses under the Licensing Act 2003. But this can present a real challenge for the average street food vendor.
Many such stalls have limited or no access to running water, for one thing. This can make vital tasks such as washing the hands, cleaning utensils and wiping down food preparation surfaces difficult to achieve.
Where facilities such as soap, water and towels are in short supply, hygiene could be compromised since the vendor’s hands are likely to cross- contaminate the food being served. This could result in a case of food poisoning on the part of the customer – and a loss of reputation on the part of the vendor.
Food stalls must also be seen to be clean. Customers will quickly be repelled by a food stall that has a grubby, soiled appearance. The vendor will therefore have to swiftly wipe up any mess and spills while also keeping the exterior of the stall clean at all times.
The lack of wall space means there will be insufficient room for traditional wall-mounted dispensers for wipers and cleaning cloths. If loose wiping rolls are used instead, these could
46 | Tomorrow’s Cleaning August 2015
easily become contaminated by splashes, spillages or meat juices.
The contaminated roll will then either be used on hands and surfaces – which could lead to a hygiene infringement – or thrown away, which will push up costs and add to the vendor’s waste burden. Meanwhile, loose rolls and dishcloths left lying around will give the stall a chaotic appearance and leave customers with an impression of disorganised clutter.
So there is an ongoing need for compact systems on food stalls that will keep the vendor’s hands and food preparation surfaces clean and contaminant-free during busy serving periods.
Hand hygiene is probably the single most important issue to be addressed on a market stall. Dirty hands could swiftly cross-contaminate food with harmful pathogens including
E.Coli and Salmonella. Where a water supply is available, washing the hands with water and soap is always the best option.
Any soap dispenser on a food stall should be compact, hygienic, easy to locate and long-lasting to avoid the problem of soap running out during busy mealtimes. Tork Liquid Soap, for example, comes in a compact mini version that contains 500 doses of soap to ensure a continuous supply during high-traffic periods.
A wall-mounted soap dispenser is less likely to become mislaid than a freestanding unit, and the Tork dispenser can be mounted on most walls, even in a food stall where space is at a premium.
The range of soaps available includes Tork Extra Hygiene for the hygiene- critical food sector. Each cartridge is sealed before use to protect the soap from contamination and the cartridge can be changed in seconds, which means that replenishing the soap
supply will not hold up the queue. And when empty, Tork Liquid Soap bottles are collapsible to take up the minimum amount of room in the refuse container.
Where no water supply is available, a good alternative to hand washing is to use an impregnated wet wipe in combination with a hand sanitiser. Tork Hand Cleaning Wet Wipes, for example, contain surfactants that capture and dissolve fatty dirt while the non-woven material rubs away the soiling, encapsulating it in the wipe. Tork Hand Cleaning Wet Wipes come in the portable Handy Bucket which is tightly sealed to prevent the wipes from drying out before use.
After cleaning the hands with a wet wipe, food stall vendors should
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