Put safety guidelines on your restaurant’s menu

Running a restaurant is a constant challenge. The profit margins can be slim, the hours are invariably long, and the demands placed on a restaurant’s owner are manifold. Still, for many it’s a labor of love.

Safety is one aspect of restaurant operations that every restaurateur needs to be mindful of. A working commercial kitchen can be hazardous, and for that reason there are multiple regulations to track and guidelines to keep in mind as a part of daily operations, with the ultimate aim of keeping everyone — staff, customers, and owners — healthy as well as well-fed.

To help you achieve that goal with your eatery — whether you’re working to create a solid plan prior your restaurant’s grand opening, or you’re looking for ways to improve your establishment’s operations — Grinnell Mutual has put together a group of publications that lay out some safety and operational issues.

Grinnell Mutual’s General Safety Guidelines for Businesses Serving Meals is a good place to start. This two-page fact sheet presents a concise rundown of the critical risk-reduction issues involved in running a restaurant.

For a fuller examination of the myriad of restaurant safety issues, Grinnell Mutual has also prepared a reproduceable PDF booklet, Developing a Restaurant Safety Program, that will help you put together a plan specially tailored to your establishment’s needs. You can download the booklet by following this link.

Among the most prominent recommendations in this guide:

Regular safety training must be provided to all employees. All training should be documented and kept in a file.
A properly stocked first aid kit should be mounted in an easily accessible area.
Slip-resistant mats should be used in front of all cooking surfaces and other slippery areas to reduce the chances of slips and falls. You should consider requiring employees to wear shoes with slip-resistant soles.
All spills should be cleaned up immediately.
Food preparation equipment such as meat slicers, grinders, mixers, etc. must have guards kept in place as required when operating. Guards may only be removed to clean or service the equipment and must be replaced after cleaning or servicing is completed. All employees should be trained to recognize the hazards associated with this type of equipment.
Employees must also be trained to recognize and protect themselves against other hazards including but not limited to burns, lacerations, material handling injuries, and chemical handling.
Work areas should be inspected daily to identify hazards before they cause an accident and/ or injury.

Fire prevention

As you work to put together your restaurant’s safety program, fire safety deserves special emphasis.

Because there are so many ways a blaze can start in any restaurant kitchen, it’s imperative — and it’s the law — that systems be in place for dealing proactively with fires. This goes well beyond having the right type of fire extinguisher close by and extends to having an automatic fire suppression system because commercial cooking equipment heats up faster than that found in home kitchens, operates at higher temperatures, and uses vegetable oils that burn at higher temperatures than animal-fat-based oils. You’ll find a more in-depth examination of the challenges of ensuring fire safety in a commercial kitchen by following the links below to a trio of downloadable PDFs:

Fire Extinguishing Systems for Commercial Cooking. Fire safety regulations for restaurant kitchens go beyond having a couple of fire extinguishers on hand to deal with emergencies. This bulletin offers a concise examination of the range of issues you ought to consider as you settle on a fire safety infrastructure for your restaurant. All employees should know how the restaurant’s system works, and what their role is in the event a fire takes hold.
Class K Fire Extinguishers. Even with an advanced automatic fire extinguishing system in place, because fires in commercial kitchens tend to burn hotter and are more difficult to put out, restaurants should have a special class of fire-fighting equipment on hand as well. Class K fire extinguishers use wet chemical agents rather than the dry chemicals incorporated in the units most homes have under the sink. Class K extinguishers reduce the danger of hot or flaming oils by smothering the flames in a soapy foam, which has the added benefit of sequestering the fire’s superheated vapors and steam. This also more quickly cools the appliances and oils, improves firefighters’ visibility, and makes for easier cleanup in a blaze’s aftermath.
Hoods, Grease Removal Devices, and Exhaust Duct Systems. A restaurant kitchen prepares a huge volume of food, and the byproduct of this activity is clouds of smoke and vapors which deposit extremely flammable grease on hoods, filters and other surfaces. Your restaurant must be equipped to deal with these volatile substances. Most commercial kitchens have multiple sources of heat for cooking — deep-fat fryers, grills, electric and gas stoves, and surface burners, to name a few. Cooking produces grease, and grease — as a flammable substance — needs to be dealt with, particularly when it’s produced in the volumes common to commercial restaurant operations. Your restaurant’s kitchen should be equipped with an exhaust system that will carry the smoke and grease of cooking away from the kitchen and vent it safely elsewhere. This requires a specialized air-handling system, which generally consists of a hood that uses powerful fans to draw up the heat and vapors, routing them through traps and filters and into ductwork, carrying them away from the kitchen.

Sources: U.S. Fire Administration; www.firesafetysearch.com

The information included here was obtained from sources believed to be reliable, however Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Company, SI, and its employees make no guarantee of results and assume no liability in connection with any training, materials, suggestions, or information provided. It is the user’s responsibility to confirm compliance with any applicable local, state, or federal regulations. Information obtained from or via Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Company, SI, should not be used as the basis for legal advice and should be confirmed with alternative sources.

7/2026