Requirement on food riders you should know

Ready to be a food rider? Or going to hire a rider for your food business in this period ? Do study the following guidelines introduced by Ministry of Health in this MCO. Practise it so that your customers appreciate your food safety services as well as enjoying your food.

1. Wearing face mask. in this MCO, wearing face mask is a must at outdoors. It helps to prevent the virus infection, to protect yourselves as well as your customers.

2. Wearing clean helmet. Make sure the helmet is clean, not only protect the rider's head but also to make sure no contamination occurs.

3. In fit condition. Riders must make sure to be fit while delivering food. They should go through COVID-19 screening in government / private health facility.

4. Make sure the delivered food is not exposed to contamination. Initiate appropriate ways to protect food from contamination. Cooked food is saved to be consumed. However, the food could be contaminated by bacteria if the delivered food is not kept probably.

5. Practice social distancing 1 meter. Always practice 1 meter away from one another, especially when delivering to food to customers.

6. Wearing clean cloth. Same as contamination concerns. Besides, clean cloth could also give good expression to your customers.

7. Not smoking. This is one of the poor personal hygiene. Should avoid it due to cleanliness. Do consider also, smoking will increase the possibility of COVID-19 infection.

8. Always wash hands with soap / use sanitizer. Remember to wash hands always. Avoid touching face and eyes at outdoors. If there is no soap and washing station, do using sanitizer.

Riders should practice the abovesaid guideline to protect everybody from COVID-19 infection. Happy selling.

Credit: Food Safety and Quality Division, Kedah State Health department

5 tips of food delivery

Today is the final day of stage 3 of MCO. Many food business owners had practiced online selling on their products and to deliver their foods to customers. And, I guess business owners has to practice it for quite a sometimes. So, let us study what are the concerns we need to take note while delivering food to our customers.

Tips 1: Make sure the food package is not opened or torn. Cooked food's temperature is high while packaged. The temperature will decrease after some times. So, the the packaged is open and torn, it will increase the possibility of food contamination by bacteria in the air.

Tips 2: Make sure the thermal bag is clean. Thermal bag is used to keep packaged food during delivery. Thus, it should be cleaned. Otherwise, contamination could happen during delivery.

Tips 3: To state the food's cooked time on the food packaging. This is very important because the consumer would know how much cooking time had passed when they receive the food. Consumers are advised to consume the food in 2 hours.

Tips 4: Make sure the personal belongings are not put together with the food. The thermal bag should be used only for storing food. Other things have bacteria on surface and could contaminate the food.

Tips 5: Make sure thermal bag is closed tightly. Thermal bag that is not closed tightly will cause bacteria and dirts to contaminate the inner part of thermal bag and eventually contaminate the packaging or food.

When food is contaminated and is consumed, it will cause food poisoning to the customers. Thus, business owners will concern about this before arranging food delivery. We will discuss more about the riders who deliver food in our next blog.

Credit: Food Safety and Quality Division, Labuan Federal Territory Health department