Katy Elliott also provides insight as to what food ratings really mean
Food safety consultant Katy Elliott
A food safety consultant has revealed the worst things she has come across in kitchens during her career while explaining what low ratings really mean. Katy Elliott has become something of a legend among Merseyside’s hospitality sector helping businesses to achieve five star hygiene ratings through her consultancy, 5 Star Food Safety.
Before starting her business, which works with 50-60 restaurants across the North West, the 63-year-old made healthy meals for nursery children. She told the ECHO: “I had two children and started doing a bit of cooking from home. Then, when my son went to a day nursery, they fed him sh*t.
“I started devising healthy meals for children in nurseries, working with nutritionists and scientists. It was a success until the chains came in and bought the individual nurseries, because they wouldn’t pay – it was too expensive. I went out of business but, in my time, I fed over one million mouths, delivering nationwide. I’d also become an expert in food safety.”
Using her expertise, Katy began to devise food safety systems for local food businesses. She added: “A friend of mine asked me if I could write them a nice, easy food safety system, because it’s complicated – and it is complicated. If you read the Food Standards Agency website, you think ‘what’s all this about?’
“It’s difficult to understand, so I started and developed an easy food safety system, and it just caught on. I now work with 50-60 restaurants, doing anything at all to help businesses get their five-star rating. If they follow the system, they get five stars. If they don’t follow the system, I smash their face in! “
As part of her job Katy audits restaurant kitchens and makes unannounced inspections – something she says is “great fun”. But what’s the worst thing she has come across while on the job? She said: “Cockroaches and maggots. Mice also cause problems – if you have one mouse in your kitchen, you can have 50 behind it.
“But generally, when places get a low rating, it stems from a dirty, lazy head chef. And if they don’t run the kitchen, and they’re just shouting and being horrible, then the kitchen is not well run.
“I’ve micro-managed a couple of places and the head chef will leave within two days because they don’t want to work with you and they know that they’re not going to succeed. However, on the whole, the chefs are proactive because I’ve made their lives easier.”
Speaking about low ratings, she said: “A lot of low ratings are down to paperwork, where they don’t understand. I worked with someone who had a two star rating and the place wasn’t dirty, it was because he wanted to cook a bit differently – but he couldn’t prove what he was doing so his paperwork was really bad.”
Katy says she loves her job, adding: “It’s great fun. And I meet lovely people – we have a right laugh and people engage with you because you’ve helped them. It’s lovely to see them flourish and grow and they’re so proud that they’ve got things right.
“Food hygiene is so important because it keeps the public safe – that’s paramount. You’ve got to be very careful.”
FOR A FREE CONSULTATION WITH KATY CALL HER ON 07940314549 OR CONTACT VIA THE WEBSITE