Getting practical advice from an expert is essential to managing a business, certification, or school project. Why? Because one gets industry information, tips, and tricks to succeed. The purpose of this article is to let you know how getting one-on-one training helps with what you need to pass your ServSafe Exam.

When you train with the DRV Institute of Management, you get positive results. Meet Gavin, a hospitality student who was baffled days before his ServSafe exam at Kansas State University. He asked me many questions and passed! Please read the conversation below:

Hello Gavin! Hi, I am a student currently here at Kansas State University. I happened to stumble upon you on the internet. I have a few questions regarding the ServSafe exam, which I am currently preparing for. Okay, and what are your questions? My first question for you is, what is number one, your best advice for preparing and taking the exam?  Oh, that would be easy; what you will do is the night before your exam, you want to review your learning materials. You want to disconnect from your cell phone from social media, avoid disagreement with anyone out there, and go to bed early because you want to be rested and have a fresh mind.

When you take your exam, the essential thing is to review the materials beforehand. You may want to record yourself a video about the review, and you listen to it. That’s what you do, concentrate, and stay away from social media or cellphone at least for one night. You can do that, right?  Of course, for sure. My next question for you is kind of related to what happens if someone gets sick at work and if they must have certain equipment when cleaning up certain accidents such as vomiting or diarrhea?

When it comes to vomiting and diarrhea, most of the time, what will happen is a customer most likely will have an accident. It would be best if you had the personal protection equipment (PPE) in place. I’m talking about like a gown, some goggles, and you need to have industrial gloves, those that will run all the way through. Then, the employee will have to wear all of that to be protected. It happened to me, and I ended up claiming that as a manager, so the employee didn’t have to.

My next question for you is related to labeling and how to do it, when to do it, and really just the best ways in order to learn it? Labeling, if you are using a cleaning detergent and you are transferring from its original container into a smaller container, make sure you put the name of the chemical like bleach or the otherwise, an employee might use a detergent that is designed to clean the floor or to clean the vomiting, to clean the grill. It can contaminate the food; therefore, it has to be labeled for that reason. And labeling is also about date marking; if you make or prep anything in the house that will be there for 24 hours, you’ll think about maroon five and that song 24, so make sure you put a date on it.

And if you’re going to be prepping something that will be there, you know it will be there up to seven days, you need to put a date on it; that is, the day that it must be thrown out and the date that you make. Got it! Another question I have is related to the pathogens: how to look out for those in the signs to know when to send your employee home or to notice when a customer you think has a pathogen that has entered your restaurant? Sometimes an employee who handles foods with bare hands can carry or transfer pathogens. It is essential to know that a pathogen is a bacterium or anything that has an opportunity to grow, and that’s why you want to keep your restaurant clean because bacteria will multiply by two within minutes. So, you will have a thousand bacteria running around, and if an employee gets sick or even a customer, you will need to send the employee home because you don’t want the employee to contaminate or get another employee sick.

If a customer is sick, the customer may sometimes have an allergic reaction like hives, itchy eyes, or shortness of breath. You will need to be ready over there, probably call 911 to help your customer. Regarding pathogens, you don’t want to cross-contaminate anything, and it is all about handwashing. What’s the most important thing you can do. How long would you keep the employee home for if they came out with some symptoms? It is 24 hours; you can keep it 24 hours, and the employee will need to bring a doctor’s note indicating that he or she is ready to come back to work. I have another question regarding cross-contamination; how to prevent that? You can use a different cutting board as well as different colors. Another way you can avoid that is by proper handwashing, personal hygiene, as you do not want an employee with dirty hands to touch a product without wearing gloves and the like.

Moreover, you can do that; another strategy use, you can always buy food that has already been prepped, like chicken breast lettuce and the like that it is ready to serve. You have all those cross-contaminants but never cut raw chicken, and then you’re gonna prep or cut lettuce for a sandwich because that would be cross-contamination right there. Okay, my final question for you is related to temperatures and knowing the right temperatures in order to cook your food and about holding your food as well? This is simple if you’re going to be cooking poultry like chicken that turkey, it will be 165 degrees. If you’re going to be cooking ground beef, shell eggs that will be served later, it’s 155. If you’re cooking fish or pork chops, eggs that will be served right away is 145 and legumes, pasta, or vegetables 135 degrees. Another important thing to know about temperatures is a temperature danger zone between 41 and 135. That means anything cold has to be at 41 or lower, anything that is hot over 135 or above. If you do that, you should be fine. So, one more thing is regarding the time management, when you’re holding your food or, let’s say, the temp the food goes into the danger zone, how long can that food be in the danger zone before you have to throw it out?

As mentioned before, hot food is four hours and cold food is six hours, but you don’t want to have food in a danger zone. If your hot food is reading, let’s say 125, and you can bring it up to 135 within two hours, you are safe. You save money; you save your food, but you don’t want that food to run between 70 and 125 degrees. It is in a very extreme danger zone, for you don’t want the food that way. That’s why when you take the food out of your walking freezer or when you cool that down food; you need to know what you’re going to do with that, put it away or serve it right away.

Makes sense; well, first of all, I have to say thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me because, as I said, I’m a student here at Kansas State University, and I am taking an eight-week course about the ServSafe exam. I was looking for more ways to prepare for the exam, and that’s when I came across your information on YouTube; and also, that’s when I looked up your website, the DRV. So, I contacted you, and that was so great to hear back from you so quickly because you were so flexible and readily available at my disposal, which made me very happy. And getting to prepare with you with all this information that you’ve given me has really made me happy, and I really do feel very confident for my exam that is coming up very soon. So like I said, this has been very great, and I would recommend Dario as a tool and as a great resource when preparing for the ServSafe exam because he has so much readily available information on his website. He has even more information in his brain that he knows off the top of his head constantly. so, I would definitely recommend Dario for any of you guys; he’s 10 out of 10 knows his stuff, so that’s what I have to say about Dario and the DRV.

Oh, thank you very much! I appreciate that, my goal is to help foodservice professionals and businesspeople, and in terms of responding to you right away, I’m all about customer service. If you reach out to me, I believe I have to go back to you, and we actually spoke not long ago and are here on the same day. And that is because the customer is right, and the customer deserves quick service; that’s what I’m here for!

Please contact me for your business consulting and training needs! Mobile: +1 (954) 534-1813 Email: dario@drvinstitute.com