With so much interest in the goings-on of their kitchens, schools need to be focussed on not only providing more healthy food, but also ensure their cooking and food preparation areas are spotlessly clean, safe and hygienic.
School kitchens and refectories will always provide a challenge for interior surfaces. Extreme temperatures, wear and tear and a high risk of spillages make these demanding environments, so ensuring the performance of materials is a must. Hygiene must also be a key consideration to ensure the health and safety of pupils and staff.
Here, I've outlined a few important considerations when selecting interior surfaces for catering environments within schools
If you can't stand the heat...
Interior surfaces in school kitchens must be able to cope with extreme temperatures. Cooking equipment produces high levels of ambient heat, and foods such as hot cooking oils will sometimes come into contact with floor and wall coverings. Chilled storage areas are often below freezing and maintaining materials performance in such harsh conditions is vital.
Surfaces must be carefully chosen to avoid posing a health risk. Performance qualities, such as slip and spillage resistance, must be maintained. Joints in some materials can be a point of weakness, for example the grouting between ceramic tiles, especially if a non-epoxy grout is used. As an alternative to tiles, a range of new materials, such as semi-rigid PVC hygienic wall cladding, are now available which offer advanced hygiene, durability and ease of maintenance. For example, Altro Whiterock offers 60 per cent higher impact resistance than ceramic tiles - an important consideration when one thinks of all the trolleys and impact from pots and pans, and there are no joints, so maintenance is that much easier, making for a more hygienic surface. It also boasts fire retardant properties.
Avoid slip-ups
With pupils and staff handling a wide variety of food and drink substances it's no wonder that accidents often occur in school kitchens and refectories. People working in kitchens are more likely to be injured through slips and trips than anything else. In fact, 53% of injuries in the education sector last year involved slipping on a wet surface, often because of a spillage of food debris or another contaminant.
Safety floors or resin flooring is an ideal choice, offering surface roughness to provide grip while being easy to clean to meet hygiene requirements. Genuine safety flooring offers slip resistance when wet, lasting for the product's lifespan. Beware of products with slip resistant surface finishes or coatings, which often wear off after only months or even weeks. There is a wide variety of safety floors on the market, including decorative products which are suitable for reception areas and corridors, where mud and water may be trodden in from outside, or any other areas such as toilets kitchens and laboratories where liquids may be spilled.
Clean up your act
Cleaning of the kitchen on a daily basis is generally down to the kitchen staff at the end of a long and busy shift. They are perhaps tired and are looking forward to getting away, so, therefore, it is essential the finishes provided within the kitchen are as easy to clean as possible. This extends to all surfaces including floors, worktops, doors, walls and ceilings. At the end of the day, a clean kitchen is essential for morale and the prevention of the outbreak of illness.
Don't overlook the cleaning and maintenance requirements of new materials, particularly as cleaning can typically amount to 50% of the life cycle cost of flooring.
Detergent, dosage, equipment and timings are just a few considerations - and that is before hygiene is taken into account. It is vital in a catering environment that all parts of the surface material are thoroughly cleaned. Again, joints can be a problem area - while ceramic tiles may themselves be easy to clean, the grouted joints are not. Choose a seamless surface with no joints to harbour germs or bacteria.
Serve up a solution
The selection of the most appropriate materials for the job in the first place will of course save time, effort and money in the long run.
Manufacturers such as Altro supply clear information on their materials, including slip resistance, cleaning and hygiene and ability to cope with extreme temperatures and spillages. Helping schools to make properly informed purchasing decisions is my recommended recipe for success for catering environments in schools.
For further information on Altro's vast product range of interior surfaces, which includes floors, walls, ceilings and doors, call:
Tel: 01462 707 600 or log on to http://www.altro.com/
