Hi,
I manage a small production facility where we make frozen ready meals. We operate out of a very small commercial kitchen (I wouldn't call it a factory!) and use pretty basic methods (ie. everything is cooked in traditional bratt pans/ovens, no automatic machinery etc). Our meals are cooked from scratch by chefs, and we have a team of kitchen assistants who do all the portioning as well as cleaning etc.
We are looking to work towards SALSA later this year/next year, and I've got a bit of an odd query around staff uniform.
Currently, the team have to change into a fresh set of work-only clothes on arrival to site (clean trousers/tshirt - they are not allowed to come into the kitchen wearing the same clothes they travelled in). The chefs wear chef whites, the assistants just wear tshirts/trousers. Everyone then wears a clean apron. Currently, we don't have rules about footwear (other than it should be kitchen appropriate), but I am introducing a rule that they need to either wear kitchen-only shoes, or use shoe coverings.
To me this is appropriate for a restaurant style kitchen, but I'm unsure if SALSA or equivalent would want to see more PPC style overalls, like you would get in a factory environment? Interested to get some thoughts around what your preference would be: fresh change of clothes with an apron, or full factory-style overall?
This is also probably a stupid question but, if going down the overalls route, I'm assuming the team would still need to change into fresh clothing on arrival to work (ie, can't just wear their travel clothes underneath the overalls?). I'm only used to being a visitor to factories where they give you the overall to put on over your regular clothes, but I'm assuming actual workers would still be getting changed into work clothes even if wearing overalls over the top?
Thanks!