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Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

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Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Earthmaiden » Mon Feb 15, 2021 2:19 pm

I found this unsurprising but interesting as I have noticed something like this happening round here. I have often wondered about better run 'pop-up' places but this could really leave a lot to be desired (and vice versa of course!).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56032185

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby scullion » Mon Feb 15, 2021 2:23 pm

i read that via the link aero put on the chat thread.
not sure i would give a hygiene certificate to someone who stored their smoker grills between the smoke box and a bench in the garden, among the fallen leaves!

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Earthmaiden » Mon Feb 15, 2021 2:56 pm

Ooh, sorry, I didn't see aero's post.

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby liketocook » Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:12 pm

We have a three county FB group set up last year for hospitality businesses to advertise their services during COVID, it has been really successful and no doubt a lifeline for many small places. Increasingly lots of adverts for home baking and folk clearly cooking at home started to appear. In the Autumn the local Environmental Health started posting to remind folk of food safety requirements, certification etc. if selling food advising they would be following up with any that weren't on their register. Consequently lots disappeared and FB pages closed down. I'm sure many are still trading but just not so visibly. However it has brought to the fore the lovely range of small producers there are in the wider area many of whom weren't wildly known out with their immediate locality which is a real positive.

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Binky » Mon Feb 15, 2021 5:55 pm

I expect most people know about this website, but in case some don't it's always useful to check out the hygiene rating of any restaurant, cafe, sandwich bar, pub, curry house etc. by using this site

https://ratings.food.gov.uk/enhanced-se ... %5E/1/1/10

Give any establishment with less than a 5 rating a wide berth as it's not that difficult to be clean and hygienic and hence a 5. (My husband used to be an Environmental Health Officer when we were first married and carried out inspections like this. He's dead keen on checking these ratings - or was when we all able to dine out).

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby karadekoolaid » Mon Feb 15, 2021 9:35 pm

I find it wrily amusing that people are concerned about hygiene, basically because I live in a 3rd world ( or should I say, 4th world :shock: ) country where hunger comes first and other things are irrelevant.
If I were at the beach, there would be dozens of vendors and food stalls; anything from ceviche or empanadas to fresh oysters. The vendors will dig into a bag or rucksack and pull out all sorts of food. The empanada stands are notable for having all the ingredients in the open air, without refrigeration, and covered in plastic wrap. Ceviches and seafood cocktails are dragged around in a wooden "showcase" and served in a plastic cup. Oysters come in a bucket filled with ice.
I´ve eaten them all and never had any adverse side effects: which doesn´t mean that others have.
Obviously, we all want perfect, hygenic conditions, but here, at least, you get what´s on offer.

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Binky » Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:34 pm

There's a lot in what you say, but it's also true that people who live all their lives with bacteria and food contamination build up a resistance. Most of the tourists to Egypt for instance end up with sickness and diarrhoea, same with visitors to India and other Asian countries. The locals aren't affected.

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Stokey Sue » Tue Feb 16, 2021 1:09 am

I remember 40 years ago a Greek friend telling me that the problem with Greek villages was that each had a well, and wells have a stable population of bacteria to which the local villagers have built up immunity. Drink water from the well in the next village, 20 minutes walk away, and you have a good chance of diarrhoea

We aren’t talking of course about major pathogens like typhoid, cholera or many forms of dysentery

I find this really useful as a way of thinking about what’s risky when travelling - and I don’t usually get infections. I eat most things, including street food, but mindfully. I’m careful about salad, cold water and ice, and some dairy. I had no gut rot in Egypt, India, Burma, China, or Thailand. I was lucky in Egypt, 6 of us went to dinner and 4 were served rice and got sick but J and I had chips we didn’t want and were fine. I did get giardiasis from a well reviewed restaurant in Turkey

With the home cooks that would worry me more than gross lack of hygiene - something that’s embedded in a household but might affect me. And I don’t suppose the allergen labelling is good

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Binky » Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:49 am

Some of the stories my husband came home with would make your hair curl.

For instance:

Babies used terry nappies soaking in a restaurant kitchen sink.

Fridge not being used hygienically, that is incorrect storage of raw and cooked foods (blood dripping onto foods below, or cooked rice next to raw chicken).

Evidence of infestations of rodents.

Accumulations of grease and filth.

Pet cat strolling over restaurant kitchen countertops.



If these things happened regularly in commercial premises, I dread to think what goes on in some people's domestic kitchens and certainly wouldn't be happy buying their food.

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Earthmaiden » Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:26 pm

It's hard to tell isn't it. We can all remember the days when food was made at home for local events and the WI etc and there was rarely any harm. Locals knew whose cooking to avoid! In the days when we had our wholefood cafe we prepared and baked quite a lot of the food at home and brought it in ( covered well in push chairs, on the bus etc!). The public health inspector didn't seem to mind (it was before home kitchens had to be inspected) but said he'd have come down more heavily if we had sold meat.

One of the difficulties now seems to be that due to so many cuts, inspections are not always as regular as they were and new places don't get a rating until inspected which is hard for them if they are clean but uninspected. Some of the filthy ones seem to be targeted, thankfully. The sad thing is that sometimes places which look nice, aren't.

That said, any private kitchen can be, and should be inspected if food is to be prepared there for sale. If you cook (say) for WI markets you adapt your kitchen accordingly (as recommended by inspector) for 'cooking days'. I sometimes wonder about the supper clubs etc which pop up.

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Stokey Sue » Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:54 pm

Earthmaiden wrote:I sometimes wonder about the supper clubs etc which pop up.


My understanding is that supper clubs, which had quite an underground life at one point, had got a bit more organised and largely moved out of domestic premises, into clubs, cookery schools or even cafes on their normal days off, and most hosts have hygiene certificates. Also as they are single events I think normal cooking (and hygiene) tends to go on hold for 48 hours, there’s a big clean up and :twisted: one dinner party is cooked. Which isn’t very risky. Though I do think of all those people on Come Dine With Me who try to cook a dinner party in a square foot of grubby space among years of detritus

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby KeenCook2 » Tue Feb 16, 2021 1:40 pm

Binky wrote:Some of the stories my husband came home with would make your hair curl.

For instance:

Babies used terry nappies soaking in a restaurant kitchen sink.

Fridge not being used hygienically, that is incorrect storage of raw and cooked foods (blood dripping onto foods below, or cooked rice next to raw chicken).

Evidence of infestations of rodents.

Accumulations of grease and filth.

Pet cat strolling over restaurant kitchen countertops.



If these things happened regularly in commercial premises, I dread to think what goes on in some people's domestic kitchens and certainly wouldn't be happy buying their food.



Sounds awful! What did your husband do, Binky? Was he a public health inspector?

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby Binky » Tue Feb 16, 2021 2:34 pm

Yes. He got his degree at Leeds and worked for two local authorities as an Environmental Health Inspector (or the old name of Public Health Inspector).

After a few years he realised that his heart wasn't in it and returned to university to study mechanical engineering. He did a PhD in some obscure branch of mathematical control engineering when it was in its infancy and went on to have a successful career but he never forgot his EHO training and observes the rules of kitchen hygiene to this day.

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Re: Pop Up Entrepreneurs During Lockdown - and hygiene

Postby KeenCook2 » Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:58 pm

What an interesting career he had!

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