The food industry is proving remarkably resilient despite the challenges of the pandemic, according to a recent report from safety specialists Steritech. It highlights how restaurants have integrated COVID-19 compliance into their day to day operations.
Since 1997, the mission of FoodSafetyMarket has been to help businesses protect themselves and their customers through food safety education. Over the years, we’ve seen more than 100,000 food handlers receive certification through our programs. One of our absolute favourite parts of having created so many strong business relationships over the years is being able to hear how our team helped another business take its operations to a whole new level. Everybody loves a success story, and we’re very happy that we’ve been able to generate more than a few ourselves.
Meet Mark, a Corporate Training Manager at one of Canada’s largest chain of restaurants. While his responsibilities are many, the main focus of his job is dedicated to assessing the training needs of the company’s restaurant chains, evaluating the effectiveness of these training programs, and occasionally hiring consultants.
Elaine is a Quality Assurance Manager at the head office of a large chain of Canadian restaurants, and her days are devoted to fact-checking data, collating data, and feeding all of that information into various reports. Despite how boring that sounds, Elaine loves her job because she knows she plays a key role in helping her franchise owners and everyone else in the business be the best they can be.
Restaurant delivery sales were already surging prior to COVID-19, and the pandemic has only managed to grow them at a faster rate. The continuing popularity of delivery options has seen the creation of an entirely new type of food service business - the ghost kitchen. Not nearly as scary as they sound, ghost kitchens offer a delivery-only alternative to traditional restaurants that patrons and food service operators alike love.
Delivery is more popular than ever before, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic keeping people all around the world cooped up indoors. While delivery services like DoorDash, Skip the Dishes and Uber Eats offer a convenient way for restaurants to have food delivered directly to their loyal patrons, using them means being unable to control the customer experience as well as losing out on a significant portion of the profit.
The popularity of food delivery services like DoorDash, Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes has exploded since the beginning of the pandemic, allowing customers to enjoy their favourite food and beverages from the safety of their home and ensuring that food service businesses can continue serving the public even in the midst of lockdowns. These services are convenient for all parties, but concerns about food safety have always existed regarding them - something that has become especially prevalent since the emergence of COVID-19 last year.
COVID-19 has had a crippling effect on the foodservice industry, forcing many businesses to close permanently or shift to models that focus heavily on delivery and outdoor dining. Prior to the pandemic, the foodservice industry directly employed over 1.2 million Canadians who served nearly 22 million people each and every day.
We recently announced the release of our very own customized virtual classrooms, offering food safety trainers a safer and more convenient way to continue teaching the next generation of food handlers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtual training has the same advantages of the traditional classroom, but without the risk of a COVID-19 outbreak taking place, and with the added benefit of giving learners the option to complete courses on demand, rather than relying solely on those who can attend classes in person.
For months now, the pandemic has been changing the way we live in big and small ways. The classroom is one of COVID-19’s most notable victims, completely changing the way we learn and interact with each other. Classrooms are now seen as a massive transmission risk to students and instructors alike, and the idea of placing many people together in a small room or auditorium without proper ventilation and physical distancing measures is now seen as unattractive to many.