Restaurant Workers

At a glance

We looked at four things restaurant workers do that affect food safety: washing their hands when they should, using gloves properly, using a thermometer to check the temperature of cooked food, and not working when they have vomiting or diarrhea. Learn what restaurant managers and food safety programs can do to improve food preparation practices.

Restaurant chef cooking over a stove.

Key takeaways

Restaurant managers and food safety programs should work to improve food preparation (food prep) practices. Efforts should focus on:

  • Younger, less-experienced workers
  • Workers in independent restaurants

Researchers should do more studies to find out what affects these food prep practices. This information could be used to find barriers to safe food prep. Fixing those barriers could help improve practices and reduce illness.

Why this is important

Studies show that foodborne illness is linked to eating outside the home (for example, in restaurants). They also show that food workers often do not handle food safely. It is important to learn more about how restaurant workers prepare food. This can help us find ways to improve how they prepare food.

What we learned

We learned that:

  • Many food workers said they engaged in risky food prep practices
  • Younger, less-experienced workers more often reported risky food prep practices
  • Workers in independentA restaurants (compared to chainB restaurants) more often reported risky food prep practices

Food safety practices

In an 8-hour shift, workers reported:

  • Washing their hands an average of 15.7 times
  • Changing their gloves an average of 15.6 times

More than half of workers did not always wear gloves while touching ready-to-eatC food.

Between touching raw meat and poultry and touching ready-to-eat food:

  • About one of every four workers did not always wash their hands
  • One of every three workers did not always change their gloves

Just over half of those who cooked food did not usually use a thermometer to check if food was done.

Some workers (5%) said they had worked while they had vomiting or diarrhea in the past year.

Differences in practices

Workers who were 25 and older:

  • Washed their hands more often than those under 25
  • Changed their gloves more often than those under 25

Managers washed their hands more often than did nonmanagers.

Workers who cooked changed their gloves more often than those who did not cook.

Workers in chain restaurants used a thermometer to see if food was done more often than other workers did.

More Information

Journal article this plain language summary is based on

Another summary related to handwashing

More practice summaries and investigation summaries

About this study‎

This study was conducted by the Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net). EHS-Net is a federally funded collaboration of federal, state, and local environmental health specialists and epidemiologists working to better understand the environmental causes of foodborne illness.
Print
Content Source:
National Center for Environmental Health
  1. Independent restaurant: One that does not have the same name or operations as any other restaurant.
  2. Chain restaurant: One with the same name and operations as other restaurants. Restaurants with the same name in many cities are chain restaurants.
  3. Ready-to-eat food: Food that can be served without washing, cooking, or other preparation.