Is the food at the grocery store safe after a power outage?
Have you ever wondered if the food at the grocery store is safe after a power outage? I have wondered and the fact is today on my 2nd day at a popular grocery store chain I discovered the truth in a wild twist of fate.
There are several steps that store management takes to ensure that food remains safe for as long as possible, monitor temperatures, and properly dispose of food that is no longer safe.
What happens if the power goes out in a grocery store while customers are present?
Immediately when the power failed the team imminently worked to safely evacuate the store and ensure that all customers worked their way to the front and out the door in an orderly manner. This ensured that no customers were harmed and nothing was broken in the course of the evacuation.
How is the temperature controlled after the power goes out?
I was quite impressed with how quickly the stores came together to deal with a power outage. Immediately after customers were safely escorted out of the store teams got to work throughout the store to ensure that all cooler and freezer doors were properly closed. Large sheets of very thick plastic were placed over open coolers ensuring that cold air was trapped as long as possible.
Coolers that were harder to secure in thick plastic like the taller coolers of things like juice that have yet to be moved to coolers with doors had the plastic as well as another layer of shrink wrap all the way around to ensure that no cold air could escape.
Layers of cardboard were added where they could to help with providing insulation to help protect food. These are all great ways to insulate and help trap in or out cold. In fact, you see many of these methods used in older homes to help winterize.
Temperature monitoring helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
These methods have proven to be effective in helping to keep food cold longer and reduce waste while keeping the food safe. I had the privilege of following my younger sister who is a front-end manager around to help monitor the temperature of the products inside the coolers throughout the store.
The team at the store helped to maintain the safety of food for customers by monitoring the temperature-controlled foods throughout the store on the hour every hour from the moment the power came back on until each cooler was back to its designated temperature range.
What happens if food gets too warm during a power outage?
With consistent temperature checks, it was easy for management to see when food was reaching near the unsafe range and make the right choices for customer safety. When reports showed that the temperature of a cooler was out of range, food was removed from the floor because customer safety was put above profit margins. Upon removal of foods, the areas were sanitized so they would be ready for restocking as soon as the next truck came in or from stock in the back that had still maintained temperatures
If management noticed a temperature was close to the danger zone they ordered for internal temperature checks just to double-check the situation. I heard the main manager for the store ordered some chicken to have the internal temperature checked when the power was returned just in case there was any error with the thermometer.
These systems of checks and rechecks help to ensure that food that remains on the shelves for you after a power outage is safe for you to consume so if you find yourself with an empty refrigerator after a power outage you can trust what your local store has to offer.
How does a power outage at a grocery store affect customers?
While many customers had to abandon their carts and come back another day it was more of an inconvenience than anything else. For new customers coming in to shop it meant being turned away for their own safety and because we could not process transactions.
While this was inconvenient some customers felt the need to report it to the police who can obviously not magically fix power equipment to allow the store to function. Please do not bother emergency responders that are better off assisting in areas that need help during a power outage, severe weather, or other emergency that could be leading to an outage at the store. Don’t worry management is working hard to get everything fixed.
Signs your grocery store recently had a power outage.
Have you ever grabbed something from the freezer section that was hard and blocky? There are a few possibilities for this. The store losing power is one possibility along with an issue with the freezer that was quickly fixed or even the truck was unloaded on a particularly hot summer day. If you are shopping for the night this food is perfectly fine to buy and use. If you are looking to store the food for a long time skip over these bags of ones further back that weather not affected so you do not risk freezer burn while in storage.
Empty coolers are a great way to guess at if your store recently had a power outage. It takes time to get new stock in after an outage and this is a good sign that your store is taking safe food temperatures seriously. Not that is not to say that anytime you see an empty cooler that a power outage is the cause. Sometimes a cooler will break and they need to remove stock to keep it from getting warm or it already got warm and had to be removed from sale all together for your safety.
Remember that these things are not the employees fault, or even management so be kind and remember that the management is doing everything they can to get the store back up and running as quickly as possible.
