Menus at a hotel change at any time to meet various demands from the diversity of guests, so hygiene checks also vary, said a food safety expert.
Dennis Lee, HACCP & Quality team manager at the Hyatt Regency Incheon, said all staff members of the hotel need to learn about the hygiene system to prepare the hotel for any food-related hazards.
Lee is one of the nation’s two Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) trainers.
HACCP is a food safety and hygiene management system designed to prevent hazards. These days many food-related companies and organizations seek to get HACCP certificates, which can be won either from the government or private institutes. The hotel was certified by Det Norske Veritas (DNV), a Norwegian institute, last December.
Lee, who played the key role in the hotel’s certification, was appointed as a HACCP trainer by Britain’s Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH), an awarding and campaigning body for public health and safety. There are only two HACCP trainers in Korea. The hotel was also designated as a HACCP training center.
“Institutes with HACCP certification are distinguished from those without it in terms of workers’ mindset, service, and prevention for food safety. When a hazard occurs, such as a foreign substance in food, certified restaurants or institutions have a system according to which they treat the affected customer and examine the cause of the problem. Such a system helps them maintain service quality and prevent reoccurrence of the same problem,” Lee said.
As an HACCP trainer, the 37-year-old educates the hotel’s staff on hygiene and HACCP. “I’m also developing education programs for students at hotel-related colleges and for people at companies which work with the hotel.”
Besides education, Lee spot-checks all food-related affairs of the hotel ― selecting food suppliers, storage of food, waiters’ service at tables, and foods and drinks at fridges in guestrooms. “I make a round of every corner of the hotel. I tell staffers what they are doing wrong, but also listen to their hardship and devise measures for improvement,” he said.
Lee said unlike chain stores or restaurants, a hotel has a large number of food materials, including imports, and menus change very often according to season and guests’ demand, so the number of checkpoints is large.
“When a new menu is introduced, I need to have a new checkpoint. Also we have a diverse range of guests, like those who are vegetarian or those who eat only halal food. To meet their various demands, we need to have various standards,” he said.
The location of the hotel ― three minutes away from Incheon International Airport ― also means something about food safety, he said.
“We have many stopover guests who arrive at night and depart the next morning and we try to offer them food that can relieve their exhaustion during flights. We also pay great caution on hygiene, because if a traveler has a meal here during a stopover and gets food poisoning or something, he or she will suffer from illness on the next flight.”
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2011/09/135_95697.html
