When Oskar Blues opened its doors in 1997 in the tiny burg of Lyons, CO, just north of Boulder, it was just a place to get some great Southern style food and listen to the best offerings from the local music scene. That all began to change when Oskar founder …
Read More »Restaurant Food Safety Tips: Shop For Suppliers
Food Safety is More Than Passing a Health Inspection Health inspections are a regular part of life in any food service business, but too often it’s easy for a restaurant or commercial kitchen to fall into the trap of just passing the inspection rather than regularly practicing good food safety …
Read More »Two Levels Of Oven Mitt
Maintaining a safe work environment for your kitchen staff is always one of your priorities. One of the most common injuries besides knife cuts is probably burns from hot cookware or hot surfaces on cooking equipment. The problem with garden variety oven mitts is they aren’t NSF certified, which means …
Read More »10 Back Burner Food Safety Tips
One of the most important responsibilities of any restaurateur is the proper implementation of a food safety program. A lapse in food safety can spell the doom of your restaurant, and if you’re just opening a new restaurant, it can mean a delayed opening night. Good food safety isn’t something …
Read More »Food Safety Tips: Understanding NSF and UL
You’ve probably seen the NSF and UL labels in your restaurant or commercial kitchen before. And you probably already have an idea what these organizations do and what that label means. But fully understanding what the NSF and UL do to make sure restaurant equipment and tools meet food and …
Read More »The Best Of The Back Burner 2009
8 months and 305 posts later, The Back Burner is getting ready to celebrate its first year as a blog for the food service industry. There’s a lot of great content we’ve posted over the course of 2009 that has been slowly buried in the avalanche of new posts coming …
Read More »Restaurant Food Safety Tips: Proper Hand Washing
Health inspections are a regular part of life in any food service business, but too often it’s easy for a restaurant or commercial kitchen to fall into the trap of just passing the inspection rather than regularly practicing good food safety procedures. This series is intended to help your business …
Read More »Restaurant Floor Matting: Safety First, Comfort Second
Getting quality kitchen floor matting isn’t only a staff comfort issue; it’s an important safety issue as well. Kitchen floor matting is made from a rubberized material and can be placed anywhere in your kitchen where staff stands while working, including on the line, in front of the dishwasher, behind …
Read More »Bars and Restaurants Using Spotters To Increase Profits
A bar spotter, or “nightclub secret shopper,” is a person sent into a bar by the owner or manager to conduct a secret quality control review of bar staff. Spotters carefully observe bartenders and other employees, watching for telltale signs of theft and misconduct. Most spotters were once bartenders themselves, …
Read More »Restaurant Marketing Trends: Do You Have A Leaky Bucket?
Think of your restaurant as a 5 gallon bucket. Every day you fill that bucket with customers. Sometimes there’s a steady flow, sometimes it’s just a trickle, and sometimes it seems like a flood. No matter what kind of day it is, every customer flowing through your doors grades their …
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