Gloves

We will look into different businesses that can benefit from powdered gloves - but, primarily, we will be using the hospitality and catering industry as a case study for the benefits of the glove. Crosbys stock a wide collection of catering consumables, including plastic aprons and order pads. The stock also includes powdered gloves perfect for improving the hygiene standards in your kitchen as well as ensuring that the health of your customers is maintained.

What are powdered gloves?

What do we mean when we talk about powdered gloves? Simply put, powdered gloves are the plastic, stretchy gloves we use in food maintenance, around a kitchen, or in medical environments to ensure that food safety standards are met and that no harmful bacteria can be transmitted between the kitchen and food as well as the patient and doctor. Wearing protective equipment is a vital component to providing your customers as well as staff with a suitable level of workplace hygiene.

The gloves stocked by Crosbys are available in a multitude of sizes in a standard blue colour. The reason for the blue colour, as opposed to a standard transparent glove, ensures that our powdered gloves meet food safety standards and are granted CE approval. The blue gloves are in line with industry food safety standards - and, should any of the glove contaminate the food while you're preparing, it should be easily identifiable because of its colour.

All of the powdered gloves available from Crosbys are latex free and made with disposable vinyl polymers. When purchasing a batch of powdered gloves, people should always consider the uses and intentions of who will be wearing the gloves and consider important variables like: will my staff be coming into contact with harmful chemicals or involved in food preparation? Do my staff work in the medical or care profession and could they be exposed to hazardous bodily fluids?

There are also a few other things to consider to ensure that you get the best and most safe use from your purchase. Here are just a few of the finer details:

• Your powdered gloves should never be too tight or too lose. If they are too tight, you risk the glove splitting and allowing bacteria to enter the food or spread to your hands and so risk contaminating the food or kitchen. If your gloves are too loose when worn, they may snag on kitchen items and cause contamination to the food.
• You should change powdered gloves when dealing with different foods. In order to reduce the spread of salmonella and E. coli, we wear powdered gloves. However, if you are involved in food preparation and have been working on a poultry dish before moving onto some fruit and vegetable preparation, this can transfer any harmful bacteria across the different foods, meaning that new gloves should be applied before you go ahead.
• You should never reuse powdered gloves. Powdered gloves should never be washed or reused - and, once you’ve finished with the relevant task, you should dispose of those gloves in an eco-friendly way. Crosbys gloves from Genware are delivered in sealed, 100-pack batches, allowing ease of access between each required usage.

What are catering consumables?

Now that we've clarified what we mean by powdered gloves, it would also be worth looking into what we mean when we say catering consumables. When you are running a business such as a restaurant, pub, café, hotel or even a factory involved in the creation of food, it’s important that you take the preventative steps to safeguard health and safety and hygiene.

You can best manage this by purchasing a plethora of catering consumables such as powdered gloves, plastic aprons and more customer-related items like order pads, condiments, napkins, straws and cocktail stirrers. Catering consumables are vital to the everyday running of a business within the hospitality industry and act as the little things that work in the background to ensure hygiene and safety.

When you want catering consumables, you can rely on Crosbys to help deliver all of the necessities for creating an efficient, health and safety minded catering business. Our main products include powdered gloves and plastic aprons as well as order pads for waiting staff in restaurants.

Range of sizes available from Crosbys

Crosbys sell a range of powdered gloves in three select sizes in small, medium, and large. You may be thinking that a powdered glove possessing a one-size-fits-all method of purchasing would be more beneficial - but, with vinyl gloves, this is simply not the case.

All of our hands are different sizes, and what works for one might be a tight fit for another. When purchasing powdered gloves for your restaurant or business, you should always buy gloves in a range of sizes to ensure that they do not split or are not too loose. Buying gloves in this way can reduce the chances of pieces of the glove contaminating the food that your staff are working with.

What are the benefits to health and hygiene of wearing powdered gloves?

When considering the requirements outlined by the Food Standards Agency and how the inspections are marked, it really is clear how much of a benefit wearing powdered gloves within your business can have when you seek to build the establishment's reputation as clean and eco-minded.

When we look at information on the Food Standards Agency website, we are clearly given guidelines as to how our food hygiene is marked and what considerations are taken by inspectors. Here’s a rundown of what inspectors consider and value when inspecting your kitchen...

The crucial factors include:

• Handling of food
• How food is stored
• How food is prepared
• Cleanliness of facilities
• How food safety is managed

The food hygiene rating scheme does not provide information on the following factors:

• Quality of the food
• Customer service
• Culinary skill
• Presentation
• Comfort

As you can see from the above information, you can meet a range of crucial criteria simply by wearing powdered gloves when handling, preparing, cleaning and storing your food.

What type of employees or businesses benefit from wearing powdered gloves?

There are a few different industries that benefit from the use of powdered gloves, but the main departments are those requiring certain high hygiene standards to ensure that a good job is done. Do you work in hospitality, catering, food production or the medical profession? Here is a rundown of some ways that powdered gloves can benefit your business:

• Restaurants, cafes, pubs – Powdered gloves are essential to kitchen staff and food preparation in a restaurant. Anyone working in the kitchen, from the porter to the head chef, should always be wearing some blue powdered gloves. Whether you’re involved in cleaning dishes or preparing poultry or vegetables prior to cooking, handing out blue powdered gloves should be the first step you take to ensure hygiene standards are met in your establishment.
• Food factories – If you work on a production line in a factory that produces food, your employers will already be pretty tight when it comes to food hygiene. Big brands are dedicated to ensuring their food is prepared efficiently and with the highest food safety standards in mind. Otherwise, such a company could suffer a gigantic PR failure should someone suffer an illness from consuming one of their products. When working on a production line, you should always wear blue powdered gloves.

What's the benefit of blue powdered gloves?

The reason why we use blue powdered gloves is simple. Let’s imagine you’ve put a pair of gloves on that are too tight or too loose and you’ve begun preparing food for the day’s service. If you’re wearing transparent gloves and part of the glove snags on a knife or finds its way into the food, you’re not going to be able to see it very clearly.

The consequences of a customer finding plastic in their food can be threefold. Complaints of food contamination can reduce the reputation of your restaurant, while a customer's health and safety could be under serious threat if they ingest possible harmful chemical polymers to which they could be allergic or on which they could choke.

Hence, you should always buy blue powdered gloves for your restaurant. Then, if any snags or splits do occur, you can - before the worst can happen - easily identify any stray pieces of plastic that could find their way into the food. Wearing blue gloves is also the standard requirement for ensuring that your business meets food safety standards set by the Food Standards Agency.

All of the catering consumable products available at Crosbys are suitable for industry use and CE certified for use in the European Economic Area.

Powdered gloves vs non-powdered latex gloves

When trying to decide what gloves to buy, the materials of our gloves can often be a second thought. However, if you are considering powdered gloves for the food industry or your kitchen staff, you should never neglect your standards by settling for non-powdered latex gloves.

These days, latex gloves are often side-tracked, with vinyl gloves favoured in medical and care industries as well as the restaurant business. Powdered gloves are designed to be donned easily when you need them the most - and this is why you should always opt for the powdered solution.

However, why should we say no to latex gloves and opt for vinyl? Many people who work consistently with latex gloves suffer from latex allergies as well as irritability to their hands, developing conditions like eczema or dermatitis caused by not drying hands properly. Crosbys only stock the prime powdered vinyl gloves on the market, creating the perfect solution for all hospitality, catering and medical buyers.

Conclusion

Throughout this article, we’ve concluded that powdered gloves are a vital catering consumable for improving the hygiene rating of your business. As well as being used in the medical and care industry, they are most primarily suited to the hospitality and catering professions where food preparation is of the utmost importance.

When looking to purchase some high-quality and industry standard catering consumables, don’t overlook how Crosbys could become your prime supplier of powdered gloves and plastic aprons as well as order pads.