Chapter 25 — Exercises

Work these with a calculator and the chapter open. Items marked † have worked solutions in the answers appendix. Every dollar figure here is illustrative; every temperature is the FDA Food Code's model framing, and you should verify all of it against your own jurisdiction's adopted code before applying any of it to a real restaurant.

A. Recall and definitions

25.1 List the Big Six pathogens. In one sentence, state what the six have in common — the reason the Food Code groups them.

25.2 State the temperature danger zone in the Food Code's framing, and explain why "the food was only out for twenty minutes" is an incomplete answer.

25.3 † Give the required minimum internal cooking temperature (and the associated hold time where the code specifies one) for each: whole chicken; a beef striploin steak; a burger patty ground in house; salmon; a pan of roasted carrots destined for hot holding; a pot of yesterday's braise being reheated for hot holding.

25.4 Distinguish cleaning from sanitizing in one sentence each, then state the four-step sequence and explain why the fourth step is not optional.

25.5 Define cross-contamination and cross-contact. Name the single property of allergens that makes the second term necessary.

25.6 † Write out the two-stage cooling rule with both temperatures and both time limits, then explain what happens — and what the code expects you to do — when the first gate is missed.

25.7 What is the difference between a priority, a priority foundation, and a core item? Give one example of each from your own workplace or a restaurant you know well.

25.8 Define imminent health hazard. Who is obligated to act first when one exists, and what does the model code require them to do?

25.9 What is the difference between a certified food protection manager and a food-handler card? Which one must be present during all operating hours, and why?

B. Applied reasoning

25.10 A cook tells you at 3:00 p.m. that they threw up once at 6:00 a.m. but feel fine now. Walk through the decision: exclude, restrict, or work? What do you need before they return, and what do you need to have in place before this conversation for your answer to be enforceable?

25.11 † A sanitizer bucket at the bar tests at 50 ppm. Give one scenario in which this is a violation and one in which it is fully compliant. What single additional fact resolves it?

25.12 Your reach-in has no ambient thermometer. Argue, in three sentences, why this is a priority foundation violation rather than a priority one — and then explain why that classification does not make it a small problem.

25.13 Your brunch menu includes a hollandaise the chef refuses to hold at 135°F because it breaks. Describe the compliant solution in full, including every document and every marking it requires, and name the one thing you must confirm with your jurisdiction before you build the station around it.

25.14 † Sort each of the following into Process 1, Process 2, or Process 3 under the FDA's process approach: a raw oyster; a fire-to-order steak; a beef stock made Tuesday and used Saturday; a charcuterie board; a burger cooked and served at brunch; a batch of confit; a dressed salad.

25.15 A line cook is wearing the same pair of gloves they put on forty minutes ago. Is that a violation? Is it a hazard? Explain the difference between your two answers and say what you do.

25.16 Your restaurant serves a rare burger at brunch and raw oysters at dinner. Name three regulatory consequences of that decision beyond the cooking temperatures themselves.

25.17 Firewood for the hearth is stacked against the rear prep-area wall. An inspector notes it but does not cite it. Explain both the food-safety reasoning and why an advisory note is worth more attention than most operators give it.

C. Cost this

25.18 † A walk-in is found at 46°F on a Tuesday morning with no temperature log for the previous 24 hours. The TCS product in the box is: 22 whole air-chilled chickens at 3.5 lb and \$3.20/lb; 30 cooked-and-cooled half-birds at \$5.60 each; 18 lb of ground beef at \$5.40/lb; 26 lb of fish at \$9.75/lb; \$214.00 of dairy; 14 quarts of house-made dressings at \$6.10/qt; 9 cases of washed greens at \$28.00; 11 quarts of cooled stock at \$4.30/qt; \$138.00 of charcuterie. Compute the total discard. Then express it as a percentage of a \$6,438 week of food purchases.

25.19 Using the discard from 25.18, add a \$400 refrigeration repair and six weeks of shelf-life loss at \$84 a week. What did deferring the repair cost, in total? Express the answer as a multiple of the repair.

25.20 † Price a food-safety program for a 31-employee restaurant: 8 thermocouples at \$22; 6 ambient thermometers at \$9; 4 vials of quat strips at \$14; 2 vials of chlorine strips at \$11; 4 manager certifications at \$179; 27 handler cards at \$15; \$310 of logs and labels; \$285 of buckets, brushes, boards and ice wands; 2 mock inspections at \$395. Total it, then express it as a percentage of \$1,550,000 in sales.

25.21 Extend 25.20: twenty new handler cards a year at two paid hours each, at an average \$17 an hour. Is the paid time larger or smaller than the course fees? By how much? What does your answer imply about where this cost should be budgeted?

25.22 † A three-day closure costs \$20,000 of lost sales at a 48.9% contribution-margin ratio, plus \$3,900 of discarded food, \$3,400 of emergency plumbing and remediation, a \$180 re-inspection fee, \$874 of deep-clean labor, and \$1,150 of goodwill pay. Compute the total. Then express it as a multiple of the annual program cost from 25.20.

D. Equipment, capacity, and the decision under uncertainty

25.23 † A blast chiller costs \$7,400 installed. The manual alternative costs \$800 in pans, racks and ice wands, plus 40 minutes of prep labor per batch, three batches a week, 52 weeks, at \$19 an hour. The chiller cuts handling to 15 minutes a batch. (a) Compute the annual labor for each method. (b) Compute the simple payback on incremental capital, on labor alone. (c) Now assume the manual method fails one batch a month, and each failure costs 30 portions of a \$20.48-contribution-margin item. Recompute the payback. (d) State, in one sentence, what information the operator actually needs and how they would get it.

25.24 Your kitchen cools 15 whole birds three times a week. Design the cooling procedure in writing — pan, depth, covering, placement, air movement, monitoring times, who does it, what the corrective action is, and what record it produces. Keep it under 150 words; a procedure a cook will not read is not a procedure.

25.25 Your restaurant wants to par-cook birds short of 165°F and finish them to order. Describe what the model code requires before you may do that, and explain in one sentence why the fully-cooked route may be the better business decision even though the food is nearly identical.

E. Read this and find the problem

25.26 † A refrigeration log for a single unit shows exactly "38" in the same handwriting, with the same initials, for thirty consecutive days. On day 31 an inspector measures the unit at 46°F. State (a) what the log proves, (b) what it fails to prove, and (c) why the operator would have been better off with no log at all — and then say what should have been done instead.

25.27 A cooling log covering six months contains no out-of-range entries at all. Give two possible explanations. Which is more likely, and what would you do on Monday to find out which one it is?

25.28 † Read the inspection report in Figure 25.7. Identify the causal relationship between two of the five findings, and explain what that relationship tells you about where to spend the correction budget.

25.29 Look at Figure 25.2's Method B curve. At the two-hour gate the product is at 118°F. A cook proposes moving it to the freezer to "catch up." Evaluate that proposal against the code and against the physics, and state what you would actually do.

F. Write it

25.30 Write the employee health policy for a 31-person restaurant, in one page, in language an eighteen-year-old dishwasher on their second job will actually understand. It must cover what to report, to whom, what happens next, and how to come back.

25.31 † Write the inspection-day protocol: one page, posted in the office, telling whoever is the person in charge exactly what to do in the first five minutes, during the walk, and at the exit interview. Include the two questions to ask before the inspector leaves.

25.32 Write the four sentences a server should say to a guest who declares a severe tree-nut allergy — including the sentence that declines to serve a dish. Then write the two sentences a server should never say, and explain why each is dangerous.

25.33 Draft the corrective-action entry for a cooling batch that missed the two-hour gate. What fields does it need in order to be useful six months later to someone who was not there?

G. Judgment

25.34 It is 5:40 p.m. on a Friday with 142 covers on the books. Your only certified food protection manager just went home with a fever, and your jurisdiction requires a certified PIC on premises during all operating hours. Lay out your options, name the cost of each, and state what you would do — and then state what you should have done in March that would have made tonight a non-event.

25.35 † A cook you like and have trained for two years admits, privately, that they have been filling in the cooling log at the end of the shift "because it always passes anyway." Nobody has gotten sick. Describe your response — to the cook, to the rest of the kitchen, and to the records themselves. Address the fact that the existing six months of logs are now a known problem.

25.36 Your dish machine's final rinse has been running below temperature for an unknown period; you discover it Saturday at 6:15 p.m. with a full book. What are your options, what does each cost, and what is the line past which you would stop service?

25.37 A guest reports feeling ill nine hours after dining with you and posts about it publicly the same night. One report, no cluster, no diagnosis. What do you do — operationally, legally, and in your reply to the post? What do you specifically not do?

25.38 Your jurisdiction posts letter grades in the window. Your general manager suggests scheduling deep-clean days around the months you were historically inspected. Evaluate that suggestion as a business decision and as an ethical one.

H. The Business Plan

25.39 † Draft the Food Safety Plan section for Bellwether: the HACCP outline by process, the log schedule with named owners, the certification schedule with counts and costs, the inspection-readiness routine, the allergen-matrix ownership rule, and the closure protocol. Two pages maximum. Then write the "what this does not settle" paragraph honestly.

25.40 Extend the plan: identify every item in the Food Safety Plan that depends on facts you cannot know until the jurisdiction is named. For each one, write the question you would ask the health department, and say which chapter's decision it would change if the answer came back unexpectedly.