Purpose: To determine the effect of a multi-phase, motivation-based educational intervention to improve the cleanliness of surfaces in a commercial kitchen.
Methods: The cleanliness of 9 objects (6 food contact (FC) and 3 non-food contact (NFC)) in one commercial kitchen were measured from June to August 2015 using adenosine triphosphate (ATP) (UXL100 Clean-Trace™ Surface ATP, 3M, Minnesota, USA) and protein (ALLTEC60 Clean-Trace™ Surface Protein, 3M) swabs. Two to three swabs (over ~4 cm2 of the surface) were collected from each object over three major stages of the study: baseline, procedural validation, and post-intervention. Surfaces were classified as clean if ATP measures were <300 relative light units (RLU) for FC; <1,000 RLU for non-food contact surfaces; and <3 µg of protein for both types of surfaces. The educational intervention, conducted after the baseline and procedural validation stages, consisted of 3 phases with the following motivational approaches: (1) management buy in, (2) monitoring and feedback using ATP and protein surface measurements, and (3) rewards.
Results: At baseline, 75% (n=9) of FC surfaces and 100% (n=7) of NFC surfaces were not clean based on ATP data, and 100% of surfaces (n=19) were not clean based on protein data. Post-intervention measures showed that 9 FC and 4 NFC surfaces were significantly cleaner (P<0.05) based on ATP while 3 FC and 4 NFC surfaces were significantly improved (P<0.05) based on protein.
Significance: Select surfaces were significantly cleaner after workers were exposed to the educational and motivational intervention. Our three-phase intervention could be used as a model for future educational and motivational interventions targeting foodservice workers.