Restaurant Kitchen Research Articles

Development of a high slip-resistant footwear outsole using a hybrid rubber surface pattern.

: The present study examined whether a new footwear outsole with tread blocks and a hybrid rubber surface pattern, composed of rough and smooth surfaces, could increase slip resistance and reduce the risk of fall while walking on a wet floor surface. A drag test was performed to measure static and dynamic coefficient of friction (SCOF and DCOF, respectively) values for the footwear with the hybrid rubber surface pattern outsole and two types of commercially available boots that are conventionally used in food factories and restaurant kitchens with respect to a stainless steel floor covered with glycerol solution. Gait trials were conducted with 14 participants who wore the footwear on the wet stainless steel floor. The drag test results indicated that the hybrid rubber surface pattern sole exhibited higher SCOF (≥0.44) and DCOF (≥0.39) values than the soles of the comparative footwear (p<0.001). Because of such high SCOF and DCOF values, the slip frequency (p<0.01), slip distance (p<0.001), and slip velocity (p<0.001) for the footwear with the hybrid rubber surface pattern outsole were significantly lower than those for the comparative footwear, which resulted in no falls during trials.

Research of Energy Utilization Policies from Restaurant Kitchen Refuse

Restaurant kitchen refuse is usually discharged from families, schools, dining rooms and restaurants. A great part of municipal waste is kitchen garbage. Using to restaurant kitchen refuse produce energy could not only decrease pollution and obtain clean energy, but also develop recycling economy with most efficient use of resources and minimal contamination of the environment. Treatment of restaurant kitchen refuses and research progress of energy production from restaurant kitchen refuse are reviewed. Production of biodiesel and methane from restaurant kitchen refuse is introduced. This paper presents related policies and suggestions to develop energy production from restaurant kitchen refuse, so as to push ahead with coordinated development of the economy and environment.

Opinions: Ethnographic Methods in the Study of Business

For this issue of the Journal of Business Anthropology, I approached a number of people who have conducted research in, with, on, or for business organizations of one sort or another and asked them to reflect upon their ethnographic experiences. What follows is a series of essays by scholars and practitioners ‒ many of them extremely experienced, but one at the beginning of her career ‒ who between them have provided us with a collation of exemplary practices and insights. It isn’t just restaurant kitchens and home cooking that provide ‘food for thought’, but cruise ships, art museums, General Motors, and an Austrian electrical company. Bon appetit!

Evaluation of polyurethane passive samplers as a tool for occupational PAH measurements

Background Exposure to PAHs at workplaces may give an increased risk of cancer. To simplify routine monitoring, passive air samplers (PAS) may be the only option since they are less disturbing than active sampling. Polyurethane foam (PUF) as a PAS in outdoor ambient air is well accepted and its capacity has been quite well studied. The applicability and capacity of the PUF need, however, to be further validated and tested under both laboratory and field conditions for typical occupational scenarios (i.e. 8 h sampling time) including particle associated PAHs such as benzo(a)pyrene-B(a)P. Aims Test and evaluate the PUF sampler; determine uptake rates in exposure chamber experiments and examine the validity of those uptake rates in an occupational situation when the sampler is worn by the workers. Methods Uptake rates were determined in two exposure chamber experiments, one with wood smoke and the other with diesel exhaust with 200-300 µg/m3 PM2.5. Following laboratory studies, the PUF were tested in the field as personal and stationary samplers for a working day (8h) in restaurant kitchens. Active sampling (Teflon filters for particle phase and XAD (II) or Perkin Elmer tubes (TenaxTA) for gas phase components) provided independent controls for each sampling period in all experiments. PAHs were determined by GC/MS methods. Results The concentrations in the exposure chamber experiments ranged for instance for phenanthrene from 10 to 450 ng/m3 and for B(a)P from 0.5 to 20 ng/m3. The uptake rates after 3-8 h sampling time for the 3-4 ringed PAHs were between 1.5 and 4 m3/day and for 5-6 ringed PAHs 0.2-0.8 m3/day. There were acceptable agreement between the PUF sampler (using the uptake rates obtained in the chamber lab experiments) and the active method in the field study. Conclusions The PUF sampler has a good potential to be used as stationary or personal sampler to monitor the exposure to PAHs.

ANALYSIS OF HEALTH RISK OF EXPOSITION TO FOOD FIRING PROCESS POLLUTANTS

Background: There are few studies in professional kitchens addresing air pollution and its effects on workers' health. Aims: To evaluate the relationship between environmental exposure and risks to the respiratory health of workers in kitchens. Methods: We used the European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS), validated in Brazil, to investigate the prevalence of respiratory symptoms in one hundred employees, fifty working in the kitchen and fifty working in the salon. The pollutants measurements were carried in and out of ten Buffet type restaurant kitchens and salons for particulate matter (PM2.5) we used the Dust Trak™ equipment with an interval of ten days and in duplicate, and for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) passive samplers were placed in triplicate for thirteen days. We used Chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests to compare the concentrations and respiratory symptons inside and outside the kitchens. Results: The signs suggestive of asthma and nocturnal cough, dyspnea and wheezing, wheezing without colds, chest tightness and medication use were more prevalent in individuals working in the kitchen when compared to employees of the salon. In relation to PM2.5measurements, the kitchen workers are exposed to concentrations twice as higher than workers in the salon in all the restaurants evaluated, in average 104.85 µm/m3 versus 51.34 µm/m3 respectively, and statisticaly significant (p&lt;.0.05). The NO2concentration was also higher and statistically significant in the kitchens (p&lt;.0.05). Conclusions: We concluded that exposure to PM2.5 and NO2inside the kitchens can be associated with a higher prevalence of symptoms suggestive of asthma, causing damages to the respiratory function of workers in these places. Therefore we suggest that control measures are needed in commercial restaurants in order to minimize the risks to the health of these workers.

Regimes of Meaning

Drawing on participant observation of a high-end restaurant, I examine how work group culture and discourse are formulated through the organization of space and time. To date, scholars have typically divided the study of space and time into two separate fields of inquiry, but the two constructs are intimately integrated. I use a natural ethnographic experiment, observing two different kitchen regimes while keeping the space and occupational pressures constant, to illustrate that groups can arrange time and space according to local cultures. My findings reveal that internally created pressures (i.e., chefs creating constraints via their managerial style) combined with external demands influence both how restaurant workers use the kitchen space during particular moments and what forms of speech they deem acceptable in those spaces and times. My study demonstrates the social organization of time and space, particularly in the context of a restaurant kitchen.

Effect of thermal hydrolysis pre-treatment on anaerobic digestion of municipal biowaste: A pilot scale study in China

Co-digestion of wasted sewage sludge, restaurant kitchen waste, and fruit-vegetable waste was carried out in a pilot plant with thermal hydrolysis pre-treatment. Steam was used as heat source for thermal hydrolysis. It was found 38.3% of volatile suspended solids were dissolved after thermal hydrolysis, with digestibility increased by 115%. These results were more significant than those from lab studies using electricity as heat source due to more uniform heating. Anaerobic digesters were then operated under organic loading rates of about 1.5 and 3 kg VS/(m³ d). Little difference was found for digesters with and without thermal pre-treatment in biogas production and volatile solids removal. However, when looking into the digestion process, it was found digestion rate was almost doubled after thermal hydrolysis. Digester was also more stable with thermal hydrolysis pre-treatment. Less volatile fatty acids (VFAs) were accumulated and the VFAs/alkalinity ratio was also lower. Batch experiments showed the lag phase can be eliminated by thermal pre-treatment, implying the advantage could be more significant under a shorter hydraulic retention time. Moreover, it was estimated energy cost for thermal hydrolysis can be partly balanced by decreasing viscosity and improving dewaterability of the digestate.

Numerical Simulation of the Acenaphthylene Compound in an Atmospheric Plasma Reactor to Treat Cooking Fumes

Acenaphthylene (chemical formula of C12H8, Acpy), also known as cyclopenta[de]naphthalene, is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) with 3 aromatic rings. The Acpy compound is a PAH on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) priority pollutant list. This study presents a simulation of an atmospheric plasma reactor (APR) using a method based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). A commercial CFD tool was used to solve mass, momentum, and energy equations. The commercial FLUENT code was then used to simulate the Acpy compound using a 3D APR to treat the cooking fume exhaust emitted from a restaurant kitchen. The simulations in this study adopted the APR size and operating parameters from a self-designed atmospheric plasma reactor in a previous study (NSC95-2221-E020-021). An in-house reduced chemical mechanism was coupled with the CFD code for improved computational runtime. The reactivity of the system was considered with the RNG k-ε turbulence model and the classical Eddy Dissipation Concept combustion model. The simulation results were compared with the experimental temperature measurement and the removal efficiency of Acpy. The simulated average removal efficiency of Acpy was 61.3%.

A Foodborne Outbreak of Gastrointestinal Illness Caused by Enterotoxigenic &lt;i&gt;Escherichia coli&lt;/i&gt; Serotype O169:H41 in Osaka, Japan

We describe our laboratory investigation of a massive foodborne outbreak of gastrointestinal illness caused by enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) serotype O169:H41 that occurred during a 2-day traditional festival held in September 2012 in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. Of 126 customers who patronized a particular Japanese restaurant during the event, 102 developed symptoms of gastrointestinal disease. We isolated strains of ETEC serotype O169:H41 from 1 food sample and from fecal samples collected from 19 of 34 patients and 2 of 4 food handlers. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis of these isolates suggested that the foodborne pathogen that caused the diarrheal outbreak was a specific clone of ETEC serotype O169:H41. Based on these findings and our interviews with the restaurant owner and employees, we concluded that a likely cause of the outbreak was an overwhelmed capacity of the restaurant kitchen in terms of preservation of sanitary procedures during the festival and the inability of the restaurant staff to handle the relatively large quantity of food to ensure a lack of contamination with ETEC. Thus, we reconfirm that ETEC strains of serotype O169:H41 remain important causes of domestic foodborne outbreaks in developed countries, including Japan.

Alien Speech, Incorporated: On the Cultural History of Spanish in the US

Over six million people file into US classrooms each year with the aim of learning Spanish. They are met by a dazzling array of textbooks, videos, interactive software, and monetized online resources targeted not only at tuition-paying consumers, but also at a substantial, if uncountable, number of learners outside the formal space of the classroom: the ambitious self-teachers and brusher-uppers who are also served by this segment of the multibillion-dollar educational publishing industry. In the face of this formidable market, let me pose a naïve question: why don't these would-be learners walk instead to a nearby location where they are likely to find one of the nation's twenty-eight million Spanish-speaking persons—a lettuce field in Salinas, a slaughterhouse in Ottumwa, a cable-company service center in Hoboken, a restaurant kitchen pretty much anywhere in the country—and instead hire a native speaker to teach them? Competing against those low-wage labor markets, the enterprising student could surely strike a smart educational bargain.1

Restaurant food cooling practices.

Improper food cooling practices are a significant cause of foodborne illness, yet little is known about restaurant food cooling practices. This study was conducted to examine food cooling practices in restaurants. Specifically, the study assesses the frequency with which restaurants meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommendations aimed at reducing pathogen proliferation during food cooling. Members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Environmental Health Specialists Network collected data on food cooling practices in 420 restaurants. The data collected indicate that many restaurants are not meeting FDA recommendations concerning cooling. Although most restaurant kitchen managers report that they have formal cooling processes (86%) and provide training to food workers on proper cooling (91%), many managers said that they do not have tested and verified cooling processes (39%), do not monitor time or temperature during cooling processes (41%), or do not calibrate thermometers used for monitoring temperatures (15%). Indeed, 86% of managers reported cooling processes that did not incorporate all FDA-recommended components. Additionally, restaurants do not always follow recommendations concerning specific cooling methods, such as refrigerating cooling food at shallow depths, ventilating cooling food, providing open-air space around the tops and sides of cooling food containers, and refraining from stacking cooling food containers on top of each other. Data from this study could be used by food safety programs and the restaurant industry to target training and intervention efforts concerning cooling practices. These efforts should focus on the most frequent poor cooling practices, as identified by this study.

WASTE TO WORTH: EVALUATION OF POTENTIAL WASTE HEAT RECOVERY SYSTEM WITHIN COMMERCIAL KITCHENS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

INTRODUCTION This paper presents results from a study that evaluated the potential of waste heat recovery technology within the context of commercial kitchens in Northern Ireland. The study, which involved both numerical simulation and measured data from five restaurant kitchens in Belfast, revealed that heat recovery technology provided substantial economic and environmental savings. Compact devices such as the spiral tube heat exchanger can be utilized as a sustainable solution to retrofit existing hot water systems. We recommend, however, that subsequent research be conducted to broaden the scope of this study by using complementary technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, or modified cookers that would provide a holistic and sustainable solution for the catering industry.

Type C botulism in swine fed on restaurant waste

The paper addresses the epidemiologic data of the death of pigs during the period of 2002 to 2009 following the ingestion of botulinum neurotoxin type C. This neurotoxin was present in food residues originating from restaurant and hotel kitchens, stored in barrels without shelter from the sun and administered in a collective trough without prior thermal treatment. Animals which died at different ages showed clinical signs of botulism characterized by flaccid paralysis, weight loss, anorexia, weakness, lack of coordination, locomotion difficulties with the evolution of lateral recumbency with involuntary urination and defecation. No alterations were observed at postmortem and histological examination. The bioassay with serum neutralization in mice was carried out on samples of intestinal contents from pigs affected and revealed the presence of large quantities of botulinum toxin type C.

The Object of Regulation: Tending the Tensions of Food Safety

“I'm struggling to see what it actually is”, says Alison, peering into a colander of defrosting meat. What ‘it’ is, we propose in this paper, is helpfully thought of as ‘the object of regulation’ in at least three senses which together signal both our inheritance of a Foucauldian problematic and our departure from it. Our suggestion is that much of even the best work on biopolitics, biopower, and biosecurity that has been inspired and informed by these writings has replicated Foucault's own struggle to get to grips with the complexity of matters that he variously refers to as “natural” or “artificial” “givens”. By following science and technology studies scholars in using broadly ethnographic techniques to explore objects as and at the intersection of practices, we redress this balance somewhat by thinking through an empirical study of the securing of food safety—specifically Alison's inspection of a restaurant kitchen. What we find is that the securing of meat as a material object of regulation is primarily done by in-volving multiple versions of the future, something which requires a great deal of usually underrecognised, undervalued, and undertheorised articulation work. With risk-based regulation, cost sharing, and public sector cuts in the UK set to redefine the ways in which Alison and her colleagues engage with food business operators, we conclude by arguing for a greater appreciation of the skilful work of tending the tensions of food safety, as well as recognition of its limitations.

Respiratory health and lung function in Chinese restaurant kitchen workers

ObjectivesTo measure air pollutant concentrations in Chinese restaurant kitchens using different stove types and assess their influence on workers' respiratory health.Methods393 kitchen workers from 53 Chinese restaurants were surveyed over...

In the Quiet

In the Quiet Jennie Lin (bio) When I was twelve, I watched a show on the hazards of the restaurant business: the inner ears of busboys, dishwashers and short-order cooks were being irreversibly damaged. A restaurant kitchen might be as loud as ninety-five decibels, which was like having an electric drill to your ear. I turned, wide-eyed, to look at our own kitchen. My mother was kicking the lower cupboards because they would not stay latched shut, my sister was screeching without breathing and, as if for effect, my father punched the refrigerator. Not too long after that night, when I looked up from the television and fretted over our inner ears, my parents sent us away and then separated. [End Page 121] My sister was to go to boarding school. I was too young to attend, and we had no relatives in the States, so I was to live with my mother's sister in Taiwan, where I had visited once before. What I remembered of it was relentless sun and haze. "I'll come for you soon," my mother whispered as my sister and I sat on our hands in the living room. "I just need some time." My sister would not speak to either of us. I asked if we were on Candid Camera. I loved television, and hidden-camera shows most of all. My mother repeated, "I'll come for you," and then my terror took hold. My aunt met me in Taipei and took me by train to the village of Tsaotun. As soon as we stepped off the train, she wrapped a frayed dishcloth around my face. The country air was full of the smoke of burning fields. She led me down a road that became narrower and narrower until it seemed impossible that cars could fit. Eventually we walked through a gate that was rusted open. On the left was a three-wall garage made entirely of wooden slats. Separated from the garage and down a dirt path was my aunt's small house of stained white brick. As we passed by the open garage, a dog in a cage barked, spraying spittle. It threw itself at the wire until the cage rocked back and forth. The dog had only one eye and a mound of matted fur where the other should have been. When the cage threatened to flip over, chains prevented it, and the dog stiffened on its paws and threatened me with a growl from its gut. "He's mad from the heat," my aunt said. The way she spoke Chinese reminded me of my mother. "And he doesn't recognize you." The dog glared at me from its one eye. "Do you let him out?" I asked, making a wide semicircle as I walked past his cage. "Sometimes, to kill the lizards." Inside I greeted my uncle, my cousin and my uncle's father. I was instructed to call my uncle's father Ah Gong, even though he was not really my grandfather. Although I had met them once before, I did not recognize them. My uncle and cousin paid little attention to me, but Ah Gong smiled. He was gap-toothed and a little tattered. When he moved his arms, you could see holes in his shirt at both armpits. Ah Gong spoke no Chinese, only Taiwanese and Japanese because his generation had been brought up under Japanese rule. My mother had explained this to me in our last days. "English won't work with anyone," she said. "Chinese will work, but not with Ah Gong or Ah Ma." She paused. "Maybe you will learn some Taiwanese," she said. But I thought it more likely that I would stop speaking. [End Page 122] I never greeted the old woman I was to call Ah Ma, or Grandmother. By the time I had unpacked my small suitcase and finished dinner, I was too tired to wonder much at the sight of her asleep on a straw mat in the family room. As a blanket she used a bath towel worn thin. Ah Ma was so small she fit completely beneath the towel, only a head of...

Operational Capabilities: The Secret Ingredient

ABSTRACTWe develop a theoretical definition of operational capabilities, based on the strategic management and operations management literature, and differentiate this construct from the related constructs of resources and operational practices, drawing upon the resource‐based view of the firm as our foundation. We illustrate the key features of operational capabilities using the illustration of a restaurant kitchen. Because the traits of operational capabilities are distinct, they create a barrier to imitation, making them a potential source of competitive advantage. However, operational capabilities are particularly challenging to measure, because they emerge gradually and are tacit, embedded, and manifested differently across firms. In solving this measurement conundrum, we draw upon similar situations experienced by Schein (2004) and Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) in operationalizing organizational culture and dynamic capabilities. A taxonomy of six emergent operational capabilities is developed: operational improvement, operational innovation, operational customization, operational cooperation, operational responsiveness, and operational reconfiguration. A set of measurement scales is developed, in order to measure each of the operational capabilities, and validated using two different datasets. This allows replication of the psychometric properties of the multi‐item scales and helps to ensure the validity of the resulting measures.

To what extent does restaurant kitchen design influence consumers’ eating out experience? An exploratory study

A restaurant's style, including that of its kitchen space can not only provide much needed comfort, but can also serve as a positive ‘complement’ in dining experiences. For example, the opportunity to see kitchen staff working may contribute to a feeling of reassurance by seeing how the foods are being prepared, especially in terms of hygiene practices. Even the ‘entertainment’ factor of seeing chefs displaying their skills could serve to enhance the experience at a restaurant. Although the potential or actual relevance of kitchen style is acknowledged in many studies, relatively little research has been conducted concerning these aspects from restaurateurs’ or consumers’ perspective. In this study, consumers’ perceptions of open restaurant kitchen styles were investigated. Questionnaire distribution in a college town in the Southern United States allowed for the collection of 277 usable responses. The findings indicate that consumers were more in agreement that in an open kitchen staff's appearance will be neater, that food will be prepared more carefully and that the kitchen will also be cleaner. In contrast, participants’ level of agreement was lowest regarding their feeling of safety with food prepared in an open kitchen, and regarding the value of the entertainment factor when they eat at restaurants featuring an open kitchen. While, in general, the levels of agreement (means) are modest, clear differences between men and women were identified in all items studied pertaining to open versus closed kitchens as they refer to the dining experience; differences were also noticed among several age groups. Overall, the findings could be beneficial for the restaurant sector in understanding consumers’ behaviour and potentially identifying segments that pay more attention to open restaurant kitchen style.

Exploring consumers’ images of open restaurant kitchen design

In their ongoing search for competitive differentiation, restaurateurs are now turning to open kitchen design as a unique selling proposition. While many different elements can contribute to memorable dining experiences in hospitality scenarios, the open kitchen concept can not only provide entertainment in the form of the display of cooks’ at work, but also ‘transparency’, that is, customers being able to see firsthand how food is handled. What images come to consumers’ minds, however, when they think of an open restaurant kitchen? To date, contemporary research has to a large extent ignored this area that could potentially have several impacts on customers’ consumption and patronage of restaurants and hotels. Gathering data from 277 regular restaurant customers, the present study explores their images of open restaurant kitchens. Overall, respondents’ comments demonstrate their positive views about the open kitchen concept, including fun, entertainment, cleanliness, trust, and being able to see both the chefs (cooks) and the food being prepared. While clearly an open kitchen concept may not be appropriate, convenient or feasible in all hospitality scenarios, the findings suggest that many consumers do appreciate elements of the concept that can be experienced during the consumption of their meals. What may be even more important is the ‘reassuring’ aspect of how their food is being prepared, including cleanliness and hygienic measures.

An Integrated Occupational Hygiene Consultation Model for the Catering Industry

Vegetable oil used in food processing, during high-temperature exposure, will generate particulate matter (PM) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are carcinogenic chemical compounds, with the potential to cause lung disease for restaurant kitchen staff. This study's design includes a three-stage consultation process with eight major consultation items, in order to build an integrated consultation model for occupational hygiene. This model combines inspection and consultation, targeting Chinese restaurants in the catering industry. Characteristics of the integrated consultation model include cooperation between different government departments and collaboration with nongovernmental, professional consulting organizations. An additional benefit of the model is the building of a good partnership relationship with the Catering Trade Association. The consultation model helps Chinese restaurants attain improvements in their work environments with minimal investment. Postconsultation, results show a 63.35% and 61.98% (P < 0.001) decrease in the mean time-weighted concentration of exposure to PM and PAHs, respectively. The overall regulation compliance rate of Chinese restaurants significantly increased from 34.3% to 89.6%. These results show that the integrated consultation model for occupational hygiene not only helps small and medium enterprises reduce exposure concentrations in the workplace but also has specific potential for successful implementation in Taiwan.