Line of Defense

BD's Mongolian Barbeque and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises take proactive measures to prevent foodborne illness and allergic reactions.

Chain Leader

David Farkas

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates 76 million people a year suffer some sort of foodborne illness while another several million adults and children have allergic reactions to or are intolerant of a variety of foods. In the majority of such cases, restaurants are blameless. But that's no excuse for being unprepared to deal with them. Consider BD's Mongolian Barbeque and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, where policies to keep customers safe take priority.

COO Debra Fratrik has a small request for a visitor who has called the raw-meat-and-vegetable section of BD's Mongolian Barbeque a "food bar." "Could you refer to it in your article as the 'Market Area'?" she asks as she is standing below a large sign inscribed with the two words.

The Market Area in the chain's new prototype, in Canton, Mich., a surburb of Detroit, is humming. Customers desiring the chain's signature stir-fry—and there are many during lunchtime on a Tuesday in early November—are plucking raw ingredients with plastic tongs from two cold stations and placing them in ceramic bowls. At the third cold station, they choose from among many proprietary sauces.

A few patrons refer to the recipe cards as they fill bowls; others design their own stir-fries, sometimes constructing teetering edifices of meats and vegetables. When they hit the sauce station, they ladle the liquids into small ramekins, though several people sample sauces first with tiny plastic spoons. For the amount of product that's being picked, piled and draped into bowls, the process is amazingly orderly—as if the customers are intent on keeping the three stations neat and clean.

Still, as shipshape as the Market Area remains, Fratrik is aware of critical food-safety issues. She is particularly concerned with temperature control and cross-contamination of raw products, which could cause a foodborne illness.

Running Hot and Cold

"I worry about temperatures," admits Fratrik, a former division president for buffet chain Golden Corral. "When you serve cooked foods, you worry about them being hot enough. Here, you worry about cold temperatures being right," she explains. Fratrik produces a clipboard on which a "market manager" has entered ingredient temperatures four times a day, beginning at 11 a.m. and ending at 7 p.m.

Cross-contamination, however, is harder to manage. "Kids really scare me, putting their hands in the food," Fratrik frets. To guard against that, the new restaurant's market manager grooms and cleans the stations while monitoring customers as they prepare their dishes. "We don't leave the area alone," Fratrik declares.

On this particular day, the employee, dressed in a ruby-colored chef's jacket, remains in the Market Area, while other workers replenish ingredients from large plastic containers. Nothing touches their gloved hands.

Another line of defense in the cross-contamination battle is a metal separator that runs along both sides of the raw chicken bin, keeping pieces from falling into the cooked sausage in the next bin. A similar separator divides uncooked shelled eggs from vegetables. Grillers are required to wash their hands at a side-sink after breaking eggs while stir-frying.

Fratrik, who joined the Ferndale, Mich.-based chain two-and-half years ago, takes credit for introducing the separators that wall off potentially hazardous foods. In addition, she formalized food-safety training for hourly workers using a Drexel University program called Food Safety First. Today, hourly employees are drilled weekly on food safety at pre-shift meetings.

Prior to her arrival, Fratrik says BD's managers were responsible for showing hourly staff how to handle food safely. "It was conventional wisdom," she recalls. A director of training is now responsible for administering food-safety programs throughout the 12 company-owned and 18 franchised units. All store managers receive ServSafe training, a certification process that must be repeated every five years.

Millions of Sick People

Conventional wisdom isn't enough to prevent foodborne illness or the lawsuits that can result from mishandling foods in high-volume restaurants. To be sure, most of the 76 million people the CDC estimates get sick each year don't blame restaurants for their illness. But when they do—and can prove it—the results can be devastating.

In June 2004, for example, now-defunct Chi-Chi's Inc. paid $2.18 million to settle 60 claims after more than 600 people contracted Hepatitis A from contaminated green onions shipped from Mexico and served in a unit in western Pennsylvania. The outbreak was blamed for four deaths.

By contrast, allergic reactions and intolerances to foods like milk, peanuts, shellfish, eggs and wheat seem to be attracting less attention these days. To be sure, food allergies are relatively rare. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates that only 2 percent of adults and 2 percent to 8 percent of children are truly allergic to certain foods. Still, for these customers, eating in a restaurant is fraught with danger; food containing even a small portion of the offending allergen can lead to upset stomachs and hives for some, serious illness or death for others

Stay Alert, Stay Alive

That's why people like Carrol Symank are not letting down their guards. The vice president for food safety at Chicago-based multiconcept operator Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises oversees a home-grown program called Allergy Alert throughout the company's 60 restaurants.

"Formally it has been in effect for about six years," Symank explains. "It was a collaborative effort among our partners, our vice president of operations and me [because] there was a growing concern with dining and allergies." New employees spend about an hour on allergy procedures in their initial training session.

When customers inform their servers ahead of time about their allergies, Allergy Alert procedures go into play. "We find out what type of food they're allergic to," Symank explains. "Then we can make recommendations based on what we think will fit their diet."

The restaurants use a handwritten ticket with the word "alert" printed on it to flag orders for people with allergies. The bright pink piece of paper lists the guest's name, where he or she is sitting and what was ordered. The manager delivers the Allergy Alert ticket to the kitchen and matches it up with the party's other tickets from the printer. Although most cooks understand how to prepare such dishes, managers have oversight in these cases.

The Personal Touch

Lettuce also addresses food-safety issues directly with customers. Something like that recently happened when a customer who dined at Foodlife, Lettuce's upscale food court in Chicago, e-mailed the corporate office describing her symptoms. "My initial protocol was to get the ingredients of the dish and give her a call and discuss her symptoms," recalls Symank, who has worked for LEYE for 18 years. "We feel like the safety of customers and employees is of highest concern. We are willing to share ingredients."

Last month, Symank got a call from a Minneapolis customer recently diagnosed with gluten intolerance wondering if she could eat at the company's restaurants. "She was being proactive about her condition. I told her we have a gluten-free menu at Wildfire but not at Big Bowl," he says. At Big Bowl, which specializes in stir-fry, an Allergy Alert ticket would be issued and a manager would oversee her dish's preparation.

Symank went the extra mile in this case. After finding out which Big Bowl the customer frequented, Symank then asked the unit's manager to call the woman to explain the procedures for accommodating customers with food allergies. "Being newly diagnosed, she needs as much assurance as she can get. Oftentimes that is through personal interaction," he says.