The retail food kitchen has become a complex food processing room. However, most retail food kitchens are not closed processing environments like most food manufacturing plants. The open format makes it difficult to reduce unintended contamination. Retail kitchens see many visitors from delivery people, maintenance technicians, school tours and even senior managers and executives. Recent research conducted by Purdue University and Cornell University reveals that the standard sanitation operating procedures commonly used by retail food businesses do not accurately clean food contact surfaces, touch points of non food contact surfaces or floors walls and drains. Development of validation of cleaning and sanitation processes at retail around hot and cold processing equipment in delis and prepared foods venues is needed. Many retailers have been researching affordable methods of validation that a low literacy workforce can use successfully. This symposium is designed to share the current research on proper validation systems for cleaning retail food kitchens and how to train and coach food employees on these new systems.

Presentations