Food safety in selected bakery outlets during COVID 19 - a case study

The advent of hospitality industry dates far back in history. It origins as simple inns to now a multibillion-dollar industry. Hospitality refers to receiving guests in a spirit of goodwill especially strangers from other lands. These catering establishments play a major role in maintaining the health of their customers. Advent of covid-19 forces the catering establishments to rethink their business due to its rapid spread. There are a lot of uncertainties as to how to address these changes in food industry to ensure better nutrition and health for customers. The implementation of food safety management systems are imperative to bring down the risk of covid-19 infection. Appropriate cleaning, sanitization and good hygiene practices are crucial. An average customer is very much anxious about the food safety practices followed in the catering establishments especially during this pandemic time. Hence case studies were done in selected bakery outlets near bus stations in Tiruchirapalli town, Tamil Nadu, India regarding the food safety aspects with special reference at the point of sales and personnel hygiene. Bakery outlets were chosen for the study as convenience foods that are sold are easily grabbed by the consumers without much crowding inside the outlet. Case study was undertaken using checklist and by observation method in four selected bakery outlets to study the upgraded cleaning and sanitization procedures, disinfection strategies, method of food service adopted, awareness among food service personnel on the standard operating procedures like usage of PPEs, social distancing, frequent hand washing, maintaining adequate health status of employees free from covid-19. The study revealed that all the selected bakery outlets adopted adequate covid-19 food safety protocols at the points of food service. Though the bakery units were aware of and implemented the standard operating procedures to be followed to overcome the uncertainty, the success lies in the hands of the food service personnel to boost confidence among the customers regarding food safety.