The impact of food safety training on employee knowledge of food safety practices for hot/cold self-serve bars

Increasing availability of foods offered by grocery stores in hot/cold self-serve bars has created new food safety training challenges. The objectives of this study were to determine if providing managers with food safety training improved their employees' knowledge of food safety practices and to determine if the food safety training provided addressed all the food safety needs associated with operating and maintaining hot/cold self-serve food bars. Three retail chains, 15 stores per chain, were observed by the investigators pre- and post-food safety training at set-up, lunch, and closing of the hot/cold bar to collect information on food safety practices. After pre-training observations, managers from eight stores per chain attended an eight-hour food safety training course (training group), while managers from the remaining seven stores received no additional training (control group). Managers from the training group were encouraged to train their employees with the knowledge they had gained. Following the training, post-training data were collected for all stores. The data showed that prior to training there was a strong correlation (r = 0.68) between manager knowledge and employee knowledge, but post-training the correlation was only moderate (r= 0.356). This suggested that after the training session, knowledge wasn't transferred from the managers to the employees. The information gained from the post-training performance and knowledge scores was used to determine the food safety training needs. These scores indicated that training materials covering practices related to food temperature, utensil usage, product handling, proper cleaning/sanitizing, and general food safety principles should be developed.