Food Service Assistant

DEPARTMENT: FOOD SERVICES

FACILITY: Tift Regional Medical Center

WORK TYPE: Full Time

SHIFT: Daytime

HOURS:

SUMMARY:

Under the direct supervision of the Food Service Director, the Food Service Assistant is responsible for providing excellence customer service to all patients and guests, maintaining a kitchen environment to the standards of state and federal regulatory authorities, and providing quality food and presentation to all guests and patients. The Food Service Assistant optimizes the department budget by reducing waste, and assists with daily food safety and department safety audits.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

* Wears full proper uniform.
* Proper use of PPE (personal protective equipment) including but not limited to gloves, aprons, safety shoes, goggles, and face shields.
* Removes jewelry from hands and arms before prepping food or working around food prep areas.
* Practices proper personal hygiene, including proper hair restraints.
* Demonstrates proper hand washing and understands when hand washing is necessary.
* Covers open sores, cuts, or splint/bandages completely when handling food, as needed.
* Practices First In, First Out (FIFO) method.
* Properly records all food temperatures using thermocouple, and properly uses time as temperature control when necessary.
* Properly labels, wraps, and dates all items within the department.
* Maintains cleanliness throughout the kitchen and production areas during entire shift.
* Ensures all equipment is clean and in working order.
* Prevents eating surfaces of dishware from coming in contact with staff clothing.
* Handles cups/glasses on the outside of the container; and knives, forks, and spoons by the handles.
* Maintains storage areas by emptying and throwing away boxes, cleaning up spills, and communicating product outage.
* Sets up and uses sanitation buckets properly.
* Demonstrates the proper way to set-up 3 compartment sink by knowing temperatures of each sink (110°F), ratio of sanitizer strength (200ppm), and 60-second contact time for Quat Sanitize.
* Maintains proper storage and labeling for all chemicals and other hazardous materials.
* Practices FIFO (First In, First Out) Method.
* Properly opens the kitchen as well as prepares for the day and evening shifts.
* Provides excellent and timely customer service to all patients, visitors, and employees.
* Maintains all food items in fresh and attractive manner.
* Communicates effectively with team to ensure product availability.
* Understands and follows prescribed diet orders, menu spreadsheets, corresponding recipes, portion sizes, and serving utensils for all diets on menu.
* Understands the different levels of therapeutic diets.
* Provides required menu substitutions or modifications in meals, for patients whose special needs restrict their diets, by use of nutritionally equivalent foods and monitoring of portion sizes for meal components.
* Properly follows procedures for lifting and moving objects to prevent muscle and back injuries.
* Knows who to contact if/ when questions regarding diets cannot be answered from diet manual.
* Determines amounts to be prepared and stocked via production sheets, patient counts, and other provided data.
* Properly maintains all equipment and serving utensils to extend the life and service times.
* Keeps abreast of all pertinent federal, state and facility regulations, laws and policies as they presently exist and as they change or are modified.
* Understands and adheres to compliance standards as they appear in the Corporate Compliance Policy, Code of Conduct, and Conflicts of Interest Policy.
* Demonstrates the ability to perform tasks that meet the age-specific requirements of the persons, patients, vendors, and staff that the employee is charged to interact with as required by the position.
* Offers suggestions on ways to improve operations of department and reduce costs.
* Attends all mandatory education programs.
* Improves self-knowledge through voluntarily attending continuing education/certification classes.
* Maintains required competency levels as identified in written exams, skills checklists, skills labs, annual safety and health requirements as well as service excellence education hours requirements.
* Willing to cross-train in order to better assist co-workers and to provide maximum efficiency in department.
* Volunteers/participates on hospital committees, functions, and department projects.
* Manages resources effectively.
* Reports equipment in need of repair in order to extend life of equipment.
* Makes good use of time so as to not create needless overtime.

EDUCATION:

* High School Diploma

or
* GED

Other Information:

Two or more years of relative experience preferred. ServSafe Certification preferred.

Southwell/Tift Regional Health System, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer.