Bare Hand Contact with Ready-to-Eat Food

Anyone who works in the food service industry these days is all too familiar with the regulation that requires food service workers to avoid bare hand contact with ready-to-eat food. Many years ago, when I started my first business, we were told to minimize bare hand contact with ready-to-eat food; now we're told to avoid it altogether.

It's okay to touch the food you're preparing if it will be cooked in between the time you touch it and the time it will be served to a customer. For example, you can use bare hands to chop onions that will be cooked as part of a tomato sauce. It's not okay to touch food with bare hands after it's been cooked, or to touch food that isn't going to be cooked at all, such as salad.

You can avoid bare hand contact with ready to eat food by wearing gloves, or by handling food with utensils such as tongs, or materials such as bakery paper, those tissue paper squares that servers use when handling pastries.

Patty Pan's menu processes don't involve any bare hand contact with ready to eat food, unless we accidentally touch an item after it has been cooked, for example in the process of transferring it from the grill to the plate. Still, we cook in a public setting where customers can see every move we make. Folks reprimand us regularly if we're not wearing gloves, even though we're touching food that's going to be fully cooked, such as cheese and tortillas.

We've started wearing gloves and using tongs when we handle cheese, because the perception is at least as important as the reality. A health inspector once told me that she'd received a complaint call from a customer who saw me touching vegetables as I transferred them from the bucket to the grill. She responded, "There's no health code violation there. If you don't like it, don't eat there. But FYI, I eat there."

Things get more complicated when there's only one person working in the booth. Unless you put on a new pair of gloves for every single order, you'll probably at some point touch money and then touch food. Granted, it's food that's going to be cooked rather than ready-to-eat food, but it's still potentially dicey. Using tongs to handle the cheese alleviates some of the problem, but it's more awkward to use tongs for the tortillas.

At the Lake City market last week, a customer reprimanded my employee who was alone in the booth, telling him that he shouldn't be wearing gloves when taking money, and then touching food with those same gloves. He told her that he didn't technically have to wear gloves because he wasn't handling any ready to eat food; he was only wearing them because he was allergic to wheat, and he had a reaction when he touched the tortillas.

The customer complained to the market manager, and she and I had a chat about it. I felt that his reasoning was possibly sound, but he should have treated the customer's complaint more seriously. I called the customer and apologized, and I also worked the market myself this week, to evaluate the situation and do some damage control.

I was careful to use gloves whenever I handled cheese, and I even experimented a bit with using tongs to handle the tortillas. Coincidentally, the health inspector showed up. She told me right away that a customer had approached her on the way to the booth, and complained that I was handling tortillas after handling money. Apparently the same customer who had complained last week had been lurking and observing.

The health inspector told me she'd told the customer that she was familiar with my operation, and it was okay for me to touch the tortillas because they would be cooked before I served the quesadillas. I told her that I always wondered about the propriety of handling food after handling money, even if that food was going to be cooked. She responded that folks always worry about the germs on money because it passes through so many hands, but money is actually made out of a type of paper that barely harbors germs. I hadn't known this, but was relieved to hear it.

Apparently the customer had been observing a number of vendors, and had a long list of complaints. Both the health inspector and the market manager felt that she was out of line, but I think the situation goes deeper than just one out of control customers.

Folks place their trust in us when we handle their food, and it's our responsibility to take their seriously. At the same time, perceptions about food safety can be quite subjective. Customers reprimand my male employees more than they reprimand female employees doing the same things and, as the business owner, they reprimand me least of all. They also reprimand my teenage employees more often than they reprimand the adults. Touching cheese with bare hands has been an ongoing source of friction but, until this week, nobody ever had a problem with us touching tortillas with bare hands.

We'll keep trying to do the best we can to comply with health department regulations, and to keep our customers safe. But we also need to take customer perceptions seriously, even when they seem silly because, for better or for worse, they're the ones buying the food and spreading the word.