Most of us in the Foodservice Industry say it’s a small world. At one time or another we will cross paths, swap a story or two and then continue doing what we do best – create meal experiences designed to wow our customers. It can have its tough moments, though. Sometimes the hours are long and the list of responsibilities even longer.

The average day is filled with stacks of paperwork that range from rebates to resumes to recipes. There are hundreds of decisions to be made and thousands of choices. We must stay on top of the latest trends while simultaneously scrutinizing food costs whilst challenging ourselves to maintain the highest standards of quality.

With so much on our plates, the last thing we need to worry about is unintentionally serving up pathogenic microbes to our guests. While most of us go to great lengths to inform patrons of potential allergens and have procedures in place to be sure there aren’t cross-contamination issues back of house, there are studies that show it can still happen despite our best efforts.

For one study published in the Journal of Environmental Health, researchers visited 21 different restaurants and swabbed the lemon slices placed in their drinks. They found that almost 70 percent of the samples produced some sort of microbial growth, including 25 different microbial species.