Protecting a restaurant and kitchen for weather emergencies is crucial to keep a business running when the power might not be.
It’s hard enough running a restaurant in calm conditions, but kitchen life can get extra difficult when things get ugly outside. Now that we’ve weathered winter storm Jonas last month, The National Restaurant Association (NRA) has compiled six ways to protect your business when the next weather emergency hits:
- Prepare for action in case power goes out. Extreme weather puts extreme stress on the electricity grid. If you have access to a back-up generator, prepare it for action. Most of the time, the generator won’t run the entire restaurant so know which systems to keep alive and which to keep dark. Make sure to hook the generator to the walk-in box first. If your power is out for a significant period of time, you could lose food. Protecting food investment and ensuring food safety is the priority. Moving food from your reach-ins to the walk-ins will give you some extra protection.
- Make sure battery back-up systems are usable. If your power goes out, any programmable system without a battery back-up will need to be reset. That could include time clocks for defrost and lighting systems. For example, a wall-mounted thermostat that hasn’t been checked in a while will lose it’s programming. If the back-up battery is dead, the thermostat won’t function correctly when the power comes back on. This will have to be reset, so it is important to check thermostat batteries as well as all of your time clocks, the NRA reported.
- Have emergency lighting systems in place. Ensure your emergency lighting systems are in working order and have plenty of flashlights. When the lights go out, the kitchen, loaded with hot equipment and slippery floors, can become dangerous, the NRA reported.
- Be diligent about personal safety. In a storm situation, emergency services are stressed to the max so be extra careful about fire safety. Keep your grease filters clean and double-down on staff safety. Keep egress in and out of the building clear and be careful of ice above and below the doors.
- Shut off your equipment. Kitchen appliances, such as convection ovens, use a combination of gas and electricity. When the power goes off, the electric side will stop, but the gas could continue to flow. The same can be true of electric solenoids that control gas flow in your exhaust hood. If there are problems with safety systems when the power comes back on, the gas valve might work, but the pilot lights might not. Make sure all appliances are turned off if power goes down.
- Maintain equipment before storms hit. To be prepared, take care of deferred maintenance items on your checklist before storms hit. Poorly charged refrigeration systems, water heaters that haven’t been blown down in a while, HVAC units with clogged filters and uninsulated water lines are big gambles. If service technicians can’t get to your restaurant in a storm, you could face trouble, the NRA reported.
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