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From food poisoning to slippery surfaces, the number of potential health and safety hazards in restaurants are endless.
How can you assess these risks? Below we cover everything you need to know about restaurant risk assessments.
A risk assessment is a process that involves identifying, analysing and controlling hazards and risks. The aim is to identify which measures are/need to be in place to control risk and ensure customers and teams are safe and your business is compliant.
A risk assessment for restaurants specifically involves identifying potential hazards and vulnerabilities in catering and dining establishments, assessing various aspects such as food safety, hygiene protocols, and fire safety.
There are many potential hazards in restaurants, so teams need to carry out a number of risk assessments, including:
For more examples of restaurant risk assessments, check out this HSE article. Trail, a complete hospitality checklist app, facilitates many of these assessments and other restaurant health and safety best practices. Explore our task templates or sign up for a free trial to give it a go.
In food and restaurant safety, a hazard refers to anything that causes harm, such as bacteria or foreign objects in food. Whereas, a risk is the likelihood that the hazard will actually cause harm, illness or injury.
Essentially, a hazard is a possible source of harm, while risk measures the likelihood of that harm occurring. It’s important to remember this when conducting a restaurant risk assessment so they can be accurately identified and prioritised.
Beyond complying with legislation, the purpose of a restaurant risk assessment is to eliminate operational risks and improve overall safety.
It is the owners/managers responsibility to perform risk assessments when:
Let’s take a look through the essential steps of conducting a thorough and effective risk assessment.
Survey your restaurant and identify any potential hazards. We recommend using a checklist to make sure everything is covered during the assessment.
To measure a risk, consider the likelihood of it occurring as well as the severity of potential injuries. Score the risks on a scale of 1-5 (1 being low risk of injury and highly unlikely, and 5 being potentially fatal injury and very likely).
After deciding on the level of risk, it’s time to come up with effective controls to protect your team, customers and the environment.
Do not skip this step! You need to keep a formal record of your risk assessments. This helps you keep track of potential hazards and it helps you stay compliant, protecting you from any potential lawsuits.
The hard work doesn’t stop after completing the risk assessment, you need to implement the controls and if the conditions change, you might need to carry out a new risk assessment.
At Trail, we have lots of intuitive tools and checklists to help you efficiently manage and streamline the process of your restaurant risk assessments. We can help you:
Make safety a habit – Checklists and forms are designed for speed and simplicity, woven into your team's working day. Trail prompts the right person to do the right task at the right time, so you know critical tasks are done.
Avoid incidents – Trail’s smart tasks automatically alert you if something isn’t right. Attach photos and comments to tasks to prove the right corrective action was taken to protect your customers, teams and business.
Drive accountability– Trail is a complete historical record of all activity, time and date stamped with photos and comments attached where needed. So you can drive accountability and confidently prove your compliance.
Performance visibility – Get insights on your productivity, compliance and more. Dashboards and daily reports highlight issues, so they can be resolved quickly without the need for time-consuming and expensive audits.
Discover how Trail can help you stay compliant
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