BUSI 644 Week 3 Individual Project: Part 1 Example

Allergen-Safe Service: A Four-Lesson Training Program With Complete Lesson Plans for a Small Bakery-Café

The Business and the Training Need

Blue Heron Bakery and Café is a composite family-owned business with three locations and 48 employees: counter staff, bakers, baristas and three shift leads. Its mission statement promises "honest food made with care for every neighbor." In the past six months, two customers with peanut and sesame allergies were served items that had been prepared on shared equipment; neither had a severe reaction, but both complained publicly. A short staff survey found that only 9 of 48 employees could name more than three major allergens and that most did not know what to do if a customer reported a reaction.

These results match national research. In a study of 278 restaurants across six sites, fewer than half of managers and food workers and only a third of servers reported receiving food allergy training, and few restaurants had separate equipment or areas for preparing allergen-free food (Radke et al., 2017). Werner and DeSimone (2017) describe needs assessment at the organizational, task and person levels; here the organizational need is protecting customers and the café's reputation, the task need is a reliable ordering and preparation process and the person need is knowledge and confidence that most staff currently lack.

Program Overview

The program, Allergen-Safe Service, has four 45-minute lessons delivered in the café before opening over two weeks, followed by an observed shift for each employee.

• Audience: all counter staff, baristas, bakers and shift leads; owners attend Lesson 1.
• Program objectives: by the end, each employee will name the nine major allergens, take an allergy order using the café's three-step protocol, prepare an allergen-free order without cross-contact and follow the emergency procedure.
• Trainers: the general manager and a shift lead trained in advance; Lesson 4 co-led with a local emergency medical technician volunteer.
• Materials: allergen matrix for every menu item, order-flag stickers, color-coded utensils, laminated job aids for the counter and kitchen and a short quiz for each lesson.

Lesson Plan 1: Why Allergens Matter

Lesson objectives: trainees will name the nine major food allergens, explain why a trace amount can cause a reaction and locate any menu item on the allergen matrix.

Materials needed: allergen matrix, two anonymized customer complaint letters, quiz.

• Minutes 0-5: the general manager reads the two complaint letters and asks, "What would we have done if this had been serious?"
• Minutes 5-15: brief presentation on the nine major allergens, milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame, with sesame highlighted because it appears in three of the café's breads.
• Minutes 15-25: discussion of the myth that a small amount is safe; trainees learn that even crumbs on a shared knife can trigger a reaction in some customers.
• Minutes 25-40: matrix scavenger hunt in pairs, finding which allergens appear in five popular items.
• Minutes 40-45: ten-question quiz; a score of 8 is required to move on.

Check of learning: quiz score and correct use of the matrix during the scavenger hunt.

Lesson Plan 2: Taking an Allergy Order at the Counter

Lesson objectives: trainees will use the three-step protocol, ask, flag and confirm, for every customer who mentions an allergy and will never guess about an ingredient.

Materials needed: counter job aid, order-flag stickers, role-play cards.

• Minutes 0-10: trainer demonstrates the protocol: ask which allergens and how severe, flag the order with a red sticker and a note on the ticket and confirm at handoff by naming the allergen to the customer.
• Minutes 10-30: role plays in threes, one customer, one counter employee, one observer with a checklist; scenarios include a rushed customer, a parent ordering for a child and a customer who says "just a little dairy is fine."
• Minutes 30-40: debrief on what made conversations awkward, with the rule that when in doubt, staff say "I'm not sure, let me check" and ask the shift lead.
• Minutes 40-45: each trainee completes one observed role play without prompts.

Check of learning: observer checklist with all three steps completed.

Lesson Plan 3: Preventing Cross-Contact in the Kitchen

Lesson objectives: bakers and baristas will prepare an allergen-free order using clean, color-coded tools and a cleaned surface, and will label and store allergen ingredients correctly.

Materials needed: purple color-coded utensils and cutting boards, sanitizer, sample flagged tickets.

• Minutes 0-10: demonstration of the allergen-free station procedure: wash hands, change gloves, wipe and sanitize the surface, use purple tools and plate the order separately.
• Minutes 10-30: each trainee prepares a flagged sandwich order while a partner watches for cross-contact risks, such as reaching across the regular line.
• Minutes 30-40: walkthrough of storage rules, with sesame and nut products on the bottom shelf in labeled bins.
• Minutes 40-45: trainees correct a staged station that contains four hidden cross-contact errors.

Check of learning: correct completion of the staged-station exercise and the observed preparation.

Lesson Plan 4: When a Reaction Happens

Lesson objectives: trainees will recognize signs of a severe allergic reaction, call 911 immediately, support a customer using their own epinephrine auto-injector and complete an incident report.

Materials needed: symptom poster, trainer auto-injector, incident report form.

• Minutes 0-10: the emergency medical technician describes common signs, including hives, swelling of lips or tongue, coughing or trouble breathing, vomiting and dizziness.
• Minutes 10-25: practice with a trainer auto-injector so staff can help a customer who is unable to use their own.
• Minutes 25-40: scenario drill: one trainee calls 911 while another stays with the customer and a third brings the customer's bag and keeps the area clear.
• Minutes 40-45: completion of a practice incident report.

Check of learning: drill completed with each role performed correctly.

Job Aids

Two laminated job aids carry the lessons onto the floor, because the textbook's chapter on implementation stresses that transfer depends on support in the work setting, not only on what happens in the classroom.

• Counter card, posted at each register: "Allergy mentioned? Ask: which allergen and how severe. Flag: red sticker and ticket note. Confirm: name the allergen when you hand over the order. Not sure? Say 'Let me check' and call the shift lead."
• Kitchen card, posted at the prep line: "Red flag ticket: wash hands, new gloves, sanitize the surface, purple tools only, plate apart, walk it out yourself."
• Emergency card, posted by the phone: "Signs of a severe reaction: trouble breathing, swelling of lips or tongue, hives, vomiting, dizziness. Call 911 first. Stay with the customer. Help with their epinephrine if asked. Then tell the manager."

Delivery Notes for Trainers

Lessons run before opening at each location so that no one trains while serving customers, and every employee is paid for the time. Trainers keep groups to six or fewer so that every trainee completes each role play and station exercise. New hires complete all four lessons during their first two weeks and do not handle flagged orders alone until they pass the observed shift. Because some counter staff are high school students working part time, the lessons avoid long lectures and rely on practice, which also reflects the gap between knowing and doing that the café's own near-misses revealed. Spanish versions of the three job aids will be printed for the two bakers who prefer them.

Refresher and Follow-Up

Knowledge fades without use, and allergy orders are relatively rare at a café, perhaps a few each day per location. Every quarter, shift leads will run a ten-minute refresher at the pre-opening huddle, rotating among the four lessons, and the allergen matrix will be updated and reviewed with staff whenever a recipe or supplier changes, since a new bread supplier could introduce sesame without anyone noticing.

Evaluation Plan

The program will be evaluated at the four levels Werner and DeSimone (2017) describe. Reactions will be gathered through a short card that trainees complete as each lesson ends, asking whether the content fits their daily work. Learning will be measured by the lesson quizzes and checklists. Behavior will be observed on each employee's assessed shift and again one month later through two mystery orders placed by the owners' family members who mention an allergy. Results will be tracked through allergy-related complaints and incidents over the following year. A pilot evaluation of a restaurant allergy training event saw the proportion of attendees able to list three or more common allergens climb from under a tenth to nearly two thirds (Bailey et al., 2014); the café will treat a similar rise as its learning benchmark.

Responsibilities: Management and Employees

Training alone will not hold if the workplace does not support it. Research with restaurant staff found knowledge and attitudes were higher where a specific person was responsible for answering allergy questions (Radke et al., 2016), and a professional work group recommended staff training together with clear restaurant procedures (Carter et al., 2020). Management will therefore provide the color-coded tools and allergen matrix, name one allergen lead on every shift, schedule lessons on paid time and review incidents monthly. Employees will follow the protocol on every order, ask rather than guess and report any near-miss without fear of discipline. This shared commitment turns the café's promise of care for every neighbor into a daily practice.

References

Bailey, S., Billmeier Kindratt, T., Smith, H., & Reading, D. (2014). Food allergy training event for restaurant staff; a pilot evaluation. Clinical and Translational Allergy, 4(1), Article 26. https://doi.org/10.1186/2045-7022-4-26

Carter, C. A., Pistiner, M., Wang, J., & Sharma, H. P. (2020). Food allergy in restaurants work group report. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, 8(1), 70-74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaip.2019.09.013

Radke, T. J., Brown, L. G., Faw, B., Hedeen, N., Matis, B., Perez, P., Viveiros, B., & Ripley, D. (2017). Restaurant food allergy practices: Six selected sites, United States, 2014. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 66(15), 404-407. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6615a2

Radke, T. J., Brown, L. G., Hoover, E. R., Faw, B. V., Reimann, D., Wong, M. R., Nicholas, D., Barkley, J., & Ripley, D. (2016). Food allergy knowledge and attitudes of restaurant managers and staff: An EHS-Net study. Journal of Food Protection, 79(9), 1588-1598. https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-16-085

Werner, J. M., & DeSimone, R. L. (2017). Human resource development (7th ed.). Cengage Learning.