Restaurants and food business owners are stepping up internal checks and spending on deep cleaning, pest control, kitchen equipment and staff training amid stricter food safety enforcement.
From using artificial intelligence to detect pests in kitchens to taking no-adulteration undertakings from dairy and cottage cheese suppliers, restaurant businesses across the country are fixing gaps in their food safety practices, fearing checks by Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) officials.
“Food safety is non-negotiable,” said Sagar Daryani, president of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), India's apex restaurant body.
The NRAI has increased engagement with thousands of members to conduct food safety training and certification or FOSTAC programmes and has doubled the number of training sessions to ensure practices are being reinforced, he said. Workshops have also been conducted in different states to help operators understand the requirements.
“Restaurant operators are particularly concerned about the reputational impact of such incidents, as complaints can quickly move from an individual customer interaction to a public social-media controversy,” Daryani said.
The association is also pushing restaurants to focus on hygiene and best practices rather than treating the recent enforcement actions purely as a compliance exercise.
It has also been working with third-party agencies for audits, he added.
Self-checks
The push comes after a series of incidents, ranging from expired products and poor-quality input materials to worms being found in food at top eateries and restaurants, reported on social media, prompting stricter food safety enforcement.
“We have been throwing cooking oil away after the third or fourth use for years. But now, when we read the rules of the FSSAI, we see that they require all establishments to buy a very expensive oil measuring thermometer that will determine when the oil needs to be thrown and not based on the colour,” said the chief executive of a top-tier restaurant chain.
Daryani said restaurants, including his own chain Wow! Momo, are also focusing on using technology to help eliminate some hygiene issues. “While pest infestations cannot always be eliminated completely due to old pipes and crowded high-street locations, much of the problem is controllable through proper hygiene, cleaning and pest-control systems,” he said.
He estimated that around 90% of pest-related issues can be controlled through measures like installing cameras and AI, while structural factors, including gaps in walls and buildings, can account for some of the remaining problems.
Anurag Katriar, founder of Indigo Hospitality, which runs Indigo Deli and other restaurants, said these checks have always been part of a good food-safety and hygiene curriculum, but now restaurants are revisiting processes that have been part of the system and tightening them wherever necessary.
“There is a special vigil on the smaller aspects of food safety, with greater attention to regular checks, training and sensitizing managers. We recently conducted a complete audit of our stores, covering nearly 2,000 stock-keeping units, and it gave us an opportunity to strengthen our processes," he said.
On analogue paneer, Katriar added that the company also sought undertakings from its suppliers to ensure they are accountable for the quality and authenticity of the product supplied.
Outside help
The FSSAI crackdown is also creating demand for food-safety and operational consultants. Samir Kuckreja, a hospitality industry consultant, founder and CEO of Delhi-based Tasanaya Hospitality, said he has seen new enquiries from restaurant operators and hotels in recent weeks, with businesses seeking help with food-safety audits, operating procedures and staff training.
“We do a comprehensive review of kitchen operations and then conduct training, both for kitchen and service teams, depending on the gaps we find,” he said. In some cases, even unannounced visits and repeat audits are found to be more useful than scheduled inspections or self-assessment checklists completed by restaurant managers, he added.
Kuckreja said many restaurant groups are making further investments in kitchen renovation, refrigeration and freezing equipment, more robust pest-control programmes and staff training.
Earlier, the focus was more on meeting compliance requirements. Now, businesses are looking more closely at whether their controls are consistently followed across outlets and operations, said Ashwin Bhadri, founder and CEO of Equinox Labs, a food safety and testing services company.
“We are seeing more interest in preventive and recurring audits rather than waiting for an inspection or a problem to arise,” he said, adding that Equinox Labs has seen a 40% rise in queries from the hotel, restaurant and catering industry about food safety and hygiene audits over the past two months.
Sanjeev Shenoy, director-Asia at customer experience research and consulting firm HS Brands Global, said the recent FSSAI inspections have highlighted the gap between a standard operating procedure and what an internal checklist says, versus what is actually happening at an outlet.
It has also begun to get inquiries from hotels and restaurants.
Mint's queries emailed to the FSSAI remained unanswered.
Supply-chain management
While restaurants can tighten kitchen hygiene and pest control, traceability of ingredients such as fruits, vegetables, chicken, mutton, and fish sourced through fragmented wholesale markets remains difficult.
A move towards more organized and traceable food ingredients could increase costs, Kuckreja of Tasanaya said. When food businesses shift procurement away from wholesale markets towards larger suppliers, costs increase significantly. Fresh meat, chicken, and fish also pose a separate challenge because many chefs prefer fresh products, while more organized supply chains provide frozen products.
“The current enforcement drive is making food businesses realize that food safety has to be managed across the entire chain and not just at the point of inspection,” said Pawan Agarwal, former chief executive of the FSSAI.
“Equally important is maintaining proper records and putting preventive systems in place so that lapses are identified and corrected before they become a risk to consumers. This shift towards preventive compliance will be critical for building consumer confidence in the food-service sector,” he said, adding that the restaurants must strive to build a food safety culture.
Dhirendra Kumar in New Delhi contributed to the story.