Food safety standards create better drinks; Practices that ensure food safety at the bar result in something we're all after: serving a quality drink

Cheers, Sept, 2007 by David Commer

Much has been written about food safety at the bar. The focus of most of these articles is on food safety for the purpose of preventing food borne illnesses. While customer safety is certainly the most critical reason for paying attention to food safety at the bar, it is not the only one. Paying proper attention to food safety has a significant impact on the quality of products that you serve and ultimately on your sales.

Protecting the integrity and quality of your beverage offerings requires and deserves emphasis similar to the time and attention you give to the back of the house. Food safety ultimately comes down to setting and enforcing appropriate cleanliness and sanitation standards, including product handling.

Can you smell that smell? A clean bar doesn't stink. A good place to start at the bar is with clean. Every area should be regularly and thoroughly cleaned. If it smells, it's not clean. The best method of cleaning is using soap and water. Sanitizing is done after cleaning.

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If your cleaning routine consists of pouring bleach down the draft beer drains and floor drains at night and burning the ice in the ice bins, it is sadly inadequate. If you have an odor and/or fruit fly problem, carefully look at every square inch of your bar and assess your cleanliness standards and routines for maintaining those standards. Don't forget the inside of the reach-in coolers.

Fruit flies love damp, sticky and dark places. Clean and dry all of the areas of the bar--especially the dark, out of the way places--to deny fruit flies places to lay eggs. In addition, cutting the fruit flies off from their food supply will go a long way in ridding yourselves of these pests.

The bottom line on quality: since foul odors affect our sense of smell, they can adversely affect the taste of a drink. And unlike the proverbial bar flies, nobody wants to party with a fruit fly.

Sparkling clean glassware is not just important from a food safety perspective but also from a product quality perspective. A separate glassware washer at the bar to help ensure that glassware is spotless is well worth the investment. Serving a guest a $10 glass of wine in a glass with water spots or lipstick will, at best, dissatisfy your guest and, at worst, cost you a sale or a customer.

True drink pros, including Robert Plotkin, an author and consultant with BarMedia, realize that one of the most often overlooked food items at the bar is ice. Since ice is used in almost every single cocktail, either in the glass or in the preparation of the drink, it should be treated consciously. Ice machines should receive regular maintenance to ensure they are in proper working order. The quality of ice has a huge effect on the quality of your beverages, both adult and alcohol free.

Ice is often mishandled by bartenders, ranging from the egregious breach of using a glass to scoop ice to the naive infraction of tossing the ice scoop, handle and all, back into the ice. This is most often done by bartenders who don't know any better. Teach your bar staff why it is important to handle ice properly, and to establish and maintain ice machine cleaning schedules. If they understand the motive--better drinks, which lead to happy customers and better tips--they are more likely to comply.

Garnishes and mixes should be prepared daily and more often if possible. Preparation of mixes and garnishes must be handled with the same attention and care as all of the other food products in your establishment. Clean and sanitary tools used by trained employees with clean hands and preferably gloves will help to ensure that you start with quality products at the bar. Storing these products properly at the bar prior to service is important to maintain the integrity of the products both from a quality and food safety perspective. Line checks to validate quality should include bar ingredients and the bar area. It doesn't matter how good the vodka you are using if the Bloody Mary mix is spoiled.

Proper hand washing for your bar staff is also critical. Every bar should have a hand sink and all bartenders should be educated with the how and why of proper hand washing. Bartending is unique in that the person who takes the order and collects the cash (or credit card) also prepares the order. Opportunities abound for poor food safety habits in this scenario. Educate your bar staff to understand the importance of hand washing after every transaction and before every recipe preparation. Doing so ensures safe preparation and service of a quality drink.

David Commer is president of Commer Beverage Consulting, which specializes in creating and implementing effective, unbiased beverage strategies for its clients. He can be reached at dc@liquidassets.org.