| | July 20208HOW CLOUD KITCHENS ARE FACING THE CHALLENGE OF HYGIENE? GHAR KA KHANA YA GHAR JAISA KHANA!By Deepti Nanda, Founder & Head Chef, Mom's KitchenO ne cannot overstate the impor-tance of hygiene in a food re-lated business ­ whether it is a regular restaurant or a cloud kitchen. Maintaining proper hygiene is a social and moral responsibility as improper hygiene might affect the health of the workers and the customers adversely. Also, lack of hygiene can quickly tar-nish the image of the cloud kitchen in question and it may end up losing business. All the hardwork, effort and capital that you have invested in the business would be good for nothing if you end up failing on the touchstone of hygiene. Since the staff plays a significant role in maintaining the hygiene, as a cloud kitchen owner, one needs to have a separate set of guidelines in-cluded in the restaurant's SOP. But be-fore we dig into the specifics on how to maintain a hygienic cloud kitchen, let us first understand why it's essen-tial to adhere to hygiene standards. Running your own foodservice business is a constant dichotomy. It can be incredibly rewarding, but it's also intensely demanding ­ especially when it comes to food safety respon-sibilities. The moment you shift your focus elsewhere, a bunch of hygiene related issues will mushroom up out of nowhere. In September 2019, Food Safe-ty and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) issued a mandatory rule for restaurants and hotels to display their hygiene ratings on their doors. These ratings are given by certified food in-spectors to ensure that there are no discrepancies."Hotels, restaurants and eat-ing joints need an FSSAI license to operate, but food safety standards are not necessarily met," says FS-SAI's Chief Executive Officer, Pawan Kumar Agarwal. Ever since the `Eat Right India' movement caught wind, a number of people from the F&B industry have become conscious about the hygiene standards at their kitchens and this has improved the image of cloud kitchens a great deal.But with the ever-increasing de-mand and the pressure to produce and deliver bulk food in time, it can sometimes become exceedingly diffi-cult to maintain the desired standard of hygiene. But it's one area of your business that you can't afford to fall behind on. Hygiene related issues can start a domino effect where one be-nign issue will give birth to another one and the process will go on until a major hygiene issue is created ­ one that you never imagined you'd have to face in your business. Let us look at some of the steps that we can take to avoid facing such a scenarioVANTAGE POINT Deepti Nanda started Mom's Kitchen in 2019 for providing lunch solutions to corporate offices and institutions. It is a cloud kitchen which started with 36 meals a day and quickly grew to 2,700 meals a day.Deepti Nanda
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