Ice, fruits and garnish

When working behind the bar you will some products which are fresh, delicate and to be handled with care. They get spoiled easily and even small mistakes can make these products unusable.
We have of course some ways of keeping them safe.

Most bars will have an ice-machine which creates ice cubes. It usually works pretty fast but depending on capacity of the machine you might want to have a backup option. If your bar would run out of ice you might as well close for the day. An option would be to stock (some) bags of ice in the freezer. These bags should be sold at your wholesaler. If you are in an area where tap water is not of the highest quality you might consider serving ice from these ready ice-bags only.
Make sure you use a good ice bucket with some sort of drainage so the melted ice water will not touch your cubes. This water generally has a high level of bacteria’s. If you scoop ice and there is water with it, dump the ice and refill the bin or bucket.
When scooping ice, use the correct tools such as a scoop. This scoop is intended solely for ice so do not use it for anything else.

Fruits can be used to garnish drinks or as an actual ingredient. The most commonly used fruits should always be on stock in your bar:

• Orange

• Lemon

• Lime

Keep them refrigerated as much as you can. They can be sliced as preparation and put back in the fridge. When the bar gets busy there really is other option than to have them in your workstation. You can use a bar-tray or fruit station, usually your sales-rep can supply you for free. These trays can hold an amount of ice under the containers as to keep your fruits somewhat cold which keeps most bacteria and insects away.

Your garnishes can be fresh fruits as discussed above, but can consist of many more things such as herbs, flowers, dried fruits, etcetera. Keep these in a box with a lit on it so the negative effect of air and temperature and minimized. Try to use tweezers or gloves when working with garnishes.

Personal note:

Any governmental institute in your area which is tasked by checking health code will mostly look at your ice and fruits in any bar. These have the most bacteria and create the biggest safety risk for your customer. Do not take it lightly, you would not want a drink full of bacteria yourself right?
Many times the ice-machine is overlooked by the bartender. It needs regular maintenance and cleaning. Fungus/bacteria find it easy to develop itself once they get inside. I suggest a bi-weekly cleaning of the whole machine which means taking out all the ice which it holds including the whole system which divides/sprays the water around etcetera. Ask the supplier of your machine for help if you need to, just keep it clean.

Sincerely,

Den The Man