People are the beating heart of the foodservice industry. Every position–from restaurant manager to dietitian to food runner–is critical in maintaining food safety.
We recently spoke with Dietary Services Manager Maggie Rowlands, CDM CFPP T-CHEST, to discuss her thoughts on food safety and how it impacts her facility. Rowlands oversees the Nutrition and Foodservice team at Pulaski Memorial Hospital in Winamac, Indiana, and works to ensure proper sanitation, food safety, and more for their patients.
Read on to see what she has to say!
What challenges do you face in your role as a dietary manager?
Getting experienced foodservice people with some knowledge of food safety and hiring teachable people who want to learn can be a challenge. It can be difficult to find staff capable of understanding the importance of preparing meals for high-risk populations like our seniors, our students, and those with autoimmune illnesses.
What parts of food safety do you find most essential?
Hand washing is the most critical part of food safety. Ensuring correct temperatures when cooking, refrigerating, rotating, and dating food is another essential part of food safety.
How do you ensure your facility’s food safety requirements are being met?
We implement daily temperature monitoring in all areas. This is an important task to guarantee the freshness and safety of our food products.
How have Trust20’s trainings helped you and your team?
Trust20 trainings have helped educate both new and seasoned staff–not to mention highlight the importance of their roles in maintaining food safety across the organization. Every team member's job is critical to both maintaining food safety standards and the healing of our patients.
What was something you appreciated about Trust20’s trainings?
Being able to offer my staff the opportunity to be safe food handlers stood out to me. The cost was also very reasonable for my whole team. Anyone working in foodservice should be able to access this vital information and provide it to staff. Overall, the Trust20 training program was beneficial for everyone and cost-effective for management.
How do you instill the importance of food safety in your team members, especially new hires?
We strive for repetitive training every day. Food safety is ongoing, so it’s important for us to hold each other accountable when it comes to best practices.
How has food safety knowledge made a positive impact on your work?
We recently had local and federal surveyors come to the facility and had no citations! The surveyors spoke with staff about safe food temperatures, sanitation, cleaning, and proper food handling. Trust20 trainings have definitely made my team more confident in their food safety skills and knowledge.
What do you think the future of food safety looks like?
In the coming years, there may be a significant amount of team turnover. Really good training will help ensure food safety standards are upheld even through difficult times in the industry.
Will there be more technology to help regulate safety or different requirements in the future?
The emergence of AI has brought a lot of new possibilities to food safety. I could see requirements such as reduced hours for staff, limited menu selections, and more home-prepared meals with more technology in the foodservice space.
Trust20 offers a variety of different food safety trainings that benefit teams like Rowland’s and beyond. Not only do they properly prepare you for all things food safety, but they also create a confident and capable team. Check out Trust20 for Teams to learn about group purchasing and the discounts that may apply!
Special thanks to Maggie Rowlands, Dietary Services Manager at Pulaski Memorial Hospital, for contributing her expertise to this content. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
