Firstly – DON’T PANIC!
Kitchen safety in your Restaurant, Cafe or Take-Away is important for any owner, manager, employee, or customer. A customer wants to eat where the food tastes good, is well priced, and is prepared in a safe manner. Their main concern is that what they get is what they ordered, and looks as good as the picture in the menu – they don’t consider the dangers of sitting in your establishment. But for you, the owner, and your employees a fire in your kitchen could have an horrific outcome with, at the worst – loss of life or serious injury and the lesser, but just as catastrophic in other ways, loss of the ability for the business to offer uninterrupted service to customers.
The best thing to ensure that you are doing all you can to prevent fires is to contact Grease Busters. With regular cleaning of your canopy, ducting and exhaust fans you are going a long way to ensuring safety in your workplace for your staff and customers alike.
Setting up safe work practices in your kitchen and ensuring that fire equipment and fire blankets are always on hand and tested is vital, as is ensuring that you have the right extinguisher for the right type of fire.Staff training and fire drills are, these days a vital part of any business. Ensure you have your fire emergency procedures showing in a safe, accessible place for staff and customers and that your exit points are clearly marked. These are all things that should be in place to ensure safety in case of a fire. And of course, if the fire starts to take hold and you cannot contain it with the fire equipment you have on site – evacuate and call the Firies!
What we have mentioned above is good information, but, in the event of a fire, putting it out quickly and correctly is vital, to avoid creating a larger blaze and setting the entire kitchen on fire. It is particularly important to know how to put out a grease fire as some methods can make it worse. In the event of a grease fire the best thing to do is to cover the skillet, pan, or other source of fire with a lid or a cookie sheet to smother the flame. Water and flour should never be used to extinguish this type of fire as it can cause it to spread. Baking soda is another method of putting out grease and also other types of kitchen fires. Dry chemical fire extinguishers are also effective at putting out fires but are messy and unsafe for any food that may be nearby.
The bottom line with fire safety in your kitchen is this – if a fire starts and you do not feel confident that you can immediately put it out – call the Fire Department and begin a controlled evacuation of your premises. If you can safely turn off any gas outlets and electricity as you go the fire guys would appreciate this and it may assist with the fire not taking hold quite as badly, and you having a total loss.
No one wants to go through the trauma of a fire. One way to lessen the risk is to ensure your greasy grimy deposits in your extraction unit and on your extraction fan are removed and not allowed to build up to dangerous levels.
Call Grease Busters today and we can assure you that the only thing that will be hot in your kitchen will be the food!
