When you're out grabbing a bite to eat, you may notice some restaurant employees handling the food a bit differently than others.
This week, Germain Brown wrote to us asking, "Is it mandatory for food service workers to wear gloves when handling food? And if we notice something wrong with a restaurant's procedure in handling food, whom do we notify?"
One Macon restaurant has gotten perfect 100s on their past seven inspections, and when it comes to food handling, the owner says he knows his stuff.
"Anytime you touch ready-to-eat food, you have to have a glove on," says Carl Fambro, co-owner of Francar's Buffalo Wings.
Fambro has co-owned the restaurant on Linden Avenue for 18 years, and handling the food isn't something he takes lightly.
"We go through a couple thousand gloves a week; plastic gloves," he says.
He tells his employees to treat the wing sauces like germs.
"You can't see germs, but you can see that sauce," says Fambro.
If you're not using gloves, that sauce, like germs, as he says, could spread quickly.
"When it comes to the front, if there's sauce on there, it goes on the bag, then on the server's hand, and it goes from the server's hand to the customer's hands at the table," he explains.
And employees at Francar's know to always scrub their hands, for the time it takes them to sing the 'Happy Birthday' song.
"When you leave the kitchen-- wash your hands, go into the restroom-- wash your hands, come out-- wash your hands, before you go back into the kitchen-- you wash your hands," Fambro says he tells his employees the same routine daily.
Although Fambro requires all servers to use gloves, the Macon-Bibb County Health Department says gloves are only required when touching ready-to-eat foods, or if a server has a hand injury that should be bandaged.
They say employees can use utensils to handle the food instead of gloves.
But with a Golden Spatula under their belt and perfect inspection reports, Fambro says they're doing it right.
"The lessons I'm putting out to my folks, and that we keep pounding on, is working," he says.
If you notice a Bibb County restaurant handling your food improperly, you can call the Macon-Bibb County Health Department at 478-749-0121.
And if you're reporting a restaurant outside of Macon, you can contact your local health department.