As the heat index soars into record levels this summer, it is critically important that extra care be taken when handling catering on board your aircraft. Paula Kraft, President of Atlanta, GA-based Tastefully Yours Catering explains.
Protecting your catering from the Summer heat

You as the flight attendant, flight crew, CSR at the hanger, FBO, or handler (including the scheduler/dispatcher) ordering the catering need to know these temperatures! More often than not, you can’t see spoiled food . . . Salmonella and e.coli have no physical signs, no smell and no taste in food.

As I will discuss, there are specific guidelines that limit the time you can safely store food at these various temperatures. Time allowances for keeping food safe include not only the time you, the flight crew, have the food, but the time from kitchen production until consumption.

How much time is required to get the catering to the aircraft?

Is it being delivered warm where bacteria can thrive and multiply, or cold, under refrigeration and chilled at the food source prior to delivery? A commercial aviation caterer is aware of the additional abuse the food is exposed to and makes every effort to provide the longest possible time remaining for the food to remain safe when delivered to you chilled.

The FBO or handler plays a role in maintaining the food temperature, whether loaded directly to the aircraft or dropped at an FBO for storage until you request the catering to the aircraft. Have you ever taken a look at the FBO/handler's refrigeration facilities? Are they monitoring and logging the temperature of their refrigeration? (and separating incoming catering - possibly loaded with tons of growing bacteria from time and temperature abuse? Is old catering or employee food touching anything in common with your food which can potentially make you ill? So sorry as I digress.

Because of the design of the aircraft and the storage of catering on board, time and temperature can be one of your most critical problems, but also one that, with care, can be one of the easiest to solve.

Bacteria are tiny so it takes a lot to make a person sick, BUT, temperature is one of the ways that bacteria can grow . . . and grow fast! NOW you will have enough to make you sick!

Our objective as a food handler is to keep the bacteria from multiplying or to slow them down enough so they won’t harm your passengers or flight crews. Bacteria grow slowly when refrigerated, like a slow turtle crawling, but the bacteria have not stopped growing . . . even under refrigeration.

Learn temperature controls

All bacteria have different temperatures and conditions which are optimum for their growth, but on average the optimal pathogenic foodborne bacterial growth occurs between 46°C (115°F) to 30° C (86° F). But remember - this depends on the pathogen. Ideally food should not spend more than 1 hour in the temperature danger zone. In the aviation world it does . . . almost each and every time. Safe temperatures over the years have been changed by government agencies

as new technology and science emerges, and different countries may have required different safe temperatures. Recently, the US changed their safe temperatures but, essentially, just moved them by a degree or so.

In 1951 safe temperatures were listed as 45° to 145°F; in 1969 they changed to 40° to 140°F. With all these revisions over the years we still need to allow for a margin of safety and take into consideration the imperfect environment we have in the aviation community.

An additional note to consider for those of you cooking at home, at the hanger, or picking up from a restaurant (warm) and transporting the food, is that transportation time will count into that “safe” time so you could be allowing that bacteria to grow . . . and fast.

Warm foods, plus a hot summer heatwave will push the catering you have into the danger temperature zone, allowing less safe time before consumption. So, a little nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, adnominal cramping may follow. How much of a risk are you willing to take?

Also consider the temperature of the aircraft interior and how early the food is pre-boarded into this hot environment. When the aircraft is hot, plan to load the catering at the last possible minute. Another consideration is whether the aircraft has a refrigerator, insulated Atlas boxes, a gasper drawer or other means to keep the catering refrigerator on board at or below 40°F/ 5 °C, which may vary slightly by a degree or two based on government regulations within a given country.

Those individuals handling the food for aircraft consumption have a high responsibility here.

There are numerous outside factors that you don’t have the ability to control on many levels

Here are a simple rules to keep in mind when handling food for your flight crew and passengers to mitigate those risks.

• Have food chilled to or below 40° when loading it.

• Never load warm food, or foods picked up from a food source unless they can be held at 140°F . This feat is really not possible without a “hot box”, or the aircraft oven on set to low to maintain the heat, but, this will affect the quality of the food after a very short time. Expect drier food, as the contain maintained warming with absorb the moisture from the food.

• Seriously, look at purchasing temperature probes to monitor internal core temperatures of food

• Consider purchasing cooler bags to transport food, and to hold food on the aircraft

• Purchase reusable ice blocks to help keep food cold

• When holding food for later use in a cooler bag, layer food, ice, food, ice

• Do not refreeze ice . . . ice is food!

• Do not refreeze frozen foods which have thawed because the safety and quality of the food is compromised

• Ask your food source to include ice packs with your catering order. We at Tastefully Yours have cooler bags with ice blankets that we provide with our catering, not just in the summer, but year round. We also provide ice packs attached to the base of all seafood, meats, vegetable, sandwich, protein plates, fruit trays if the catering is being held for any length of time after it leaves our hands. As an aviation catering source, we are mitigating your risks and providing a corrective action to alleviate the risk. We loan the bags to crews, for a small rental fee, and they can keep them for those longer trips. We also sell collapsible bags, from Airware if requested. You have to take the imitative with your catering source, to request properly chilled and a means to properly hold foods at a safe temperature as they do not know your individual circumstance for aircraft chilling capabilities

• When in doubt throw it out

Basic practices to follow are:

• Clean your hands, your surfaces and your equipment.

• Chill food correctly. Never leave perishable foods unrefrigerated more than 2 hours to keep harmful bacteria from growing. Use a thermometer in your gasper drawer, in your cooler boxes, or in your refrigerator or freezer to make sure that the internal temperature of the food stays at 40° F /5 °C. What is considered a perishable? Prepared foods, fruits, vegetables, tofu, soy products, sprouts, and yes raw crudité trays, pastries, any custard or cream desserts and leftovers.

• If you are traveling self-contained for future days or even weeks and must thaw foods for use, keep these point in mind. Never leave food out on the counter or in the sink to defrost. It should be defrosted slowly in a chilled environment in order for the food to maintain a constant temperature. Think about a defrosting process. The food sits out and the surface of the food gets warmer than the interior of the food. Bacteria are growing on the outside surface of the food because it is warmer than the interior. Microwave defrosting creates the same problem with hot spots forming in the thawing food. If you must defrost in a microwave, then that food should be immediately cooked and not held to be cooked at a later time.

• Do not over pack the refrigerator, or gasper drawer. I realize it is tempting, but, air must circulate to cool properly . . . even at home.

• When packing food for an aircraft, pack in small rather than large containers. The food should not be deep, as I mentioned last week about rice, this applies to all foods. Stop and think like the bacteria for a minute. If you pack food deep and dense, whether leftover or loading your new catering, then the bacteria have places to hide and grow from the refrigeration and from the heating process. The secret here is to keep the food either totally cold or totally hot and that the time spent passing through the danger zone is as short as possible.

• If serving food later or taking food to be served on a later leg, break the food down into smaller portions and pack in smaller shallow oven, microwave or CPET containers. This enables the food to cool more quickly and reheat faster, saving time in the temperature danger zone.

• Think about that bacteria when cooling down food from a food source to serve at a later time. If you place hot food in your chiller, cooler bag, gasper drawer or refrigerator, the heat of that food is also heating up the interior of the fridge as it works to chill it down, and that means these bacteria are in love with you as now you have provided them with even more food in which to grow.

• Discard perishable food left at room temperature for more than 2 hours, and one hour if the temperatures are above 90° F.

On an aircraft you are eating food made by someone else, and you trust them to keep the fod you are being served safe. Cooking and cooling foods correctly are the most important things you can do to keep your passengers and crews healthy. Caterers have knowledge of how to eliminate or decrease bacterial growth in order to assure maximum shelf life and food safety by cooking and cooling with trained individuals, are you trained to access and then mitigate the risk when preparing food on board or at home for a flight?

Keep your food cold!

Let me introduce myself . . . 

My name is Paula Kraft and I am founder and President of Tastefully Yours Catering, an aviation specific caterer, located in Atlanta, Georgia for 35 years.

Aviation Catering is a science not taught in Culinary School; it’s a function of experience, experimentation, basic trial and error, with constant feedback from flight crews and clients. It is a two-way communication. It is vital that this information and knowledge be shared throughout the industry. To this end, I have worked as the Chairman of the NBAA Caterer’s Working Group, a subcommittee of the NBAA Flight Attendant Committee, the NBAA Caterer Representative to the NBAA Flight Attendant Committee, for 9 years.

Currently I am an active member of the NBAA Flight Attendant Committee Advisory Board and the NBAA International Flight Attendant Committee, Women in Corporate Aviation, Women in Aviation International, National Association of Catering Executives, International Flight Catering Association, the International Food Service Association and the International Caterer’s Association.

I have coordinated training programs and clinics for NBAA, EBAA and BA-Meetup conference attendees for over 10 years, created mentoring programs for caterers and flight attendants to broaden their aviation culinary skills, and to assist them in adapting to the unique challenges and constraints found in catering for general aviation. I recognize the need for training and have worked closely with flight departments, flight crews, schedulers and customer service reps at the FBOs to ensure that catering specific training provides information and skills necessary to reduce risk while assisting them in their job duties that include safe food handling, catering security, accurate transmission of food orders, and safe food production, packaging and delivery.

I fell into aviation catering quite by accident. I was the in-house caterer and bakery supplier for Macy’s department stores in Atlanta when catering was ordered for a Macy’s customer which was soon to change my life. After the client enjoyed the catering provided, I was summoned to the client’s corporate office to provide several of the items delivered through Macy’s to the executive dining room. Within a week, I was providing food for the flight department and my first order was for the President of a foreign country (as I was too be told soon after). So, here I am, some 35 years later, still loving every minute of every day in aviation catering.

©BlueSky Business Aviation News | 31st July 2014 | Issue #283

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