Training for hot beverage safety: Five tips that make it easy

Brain freeze? Ice down your shirt? It’s true: Iced beverages carry the risk of a few minor inconveniences. But iced drinks don’t carry the risks of serious injury—or legal action—that hot beverages bring.

As summer gives way to fall, and the scents of pumpkin spice and salted caramel fill the air, hot drinks are making their seasonal return—along with concerns about hot beverage safety. It’s critical to avoid spill burns and legal action that endanger your customers, staff, reputation, and bottom line.

As the drinks heat up, so does the need for consistent, ongoing training of both new and experienced staff to ensure your entire team consistently uses best practices for serving hot coffee, tea, and other drinks.

With decades of experience as coffee professionals, we’re here with key tips that will help you consistently train your staff in hot beverage safety.

Why does hot beverage safety training come up cold?

Before we outline our top tips, it’s important to think about the barriers that get in the way of strong, consistent training. Most owners and managers already know that training their employees to avoid spills is critical to business operations, but it’s easy for good training practices to get bumped down the list. Reasons include

• “Urgent” crises that require immediate attention
• Staff turnover
• Lack of dedicated trainers
• Lack of up-to-date formal training curriculum
• Believing that training only needs to happen once for any given employee
• Misunderstanding the serious nature of hot beverage spill burns

Do any of these reasons apply to your company?

We’ve seen far too many spill burns, and the severe, permanent damage they can do. Hot beverage burns are no joke and we’ve made it a mission to stop them from happening in the first place. If any of these reasons–or other barriers—apply to you and prevent you from making training a priority, keep reading for simple, straightforward solutions.

Five tips to make ongoing hot beverage safety training easy

We believe that good training doesn’t just happen once. When it happens daily it becomes part of the fabric and culture of a successful company. This will help ensure that every team member, no matter their seniority, has hot beverage safety at the top of their mind during every shift.

Here are five clear steps to make consistent, high-quality hot beverage safety training a no-hassle part of your routine.

Standardize it with best practices

Don’t just wing it when it comes to teaching staff how to prepare and serve hot beverages. Write down standard practices in a training manual and teach them the same way every time to reinforce them.

Best practices for hot beverage safety include

• Training staff on the ideal temperature for brewing and serving coffee and other hot beverages
• The proper use of brewing equipment and serving products, including cups and lids
• Avoiding hand-to-hand transfer wherever possible
• Keeping drinks out of reach of small children
• Giving a verbal reminder that the drink is very hot
• What to do in case of an accidental hot beverage spill, to help the customer and also to protect your business in case of a lawsuit
• Drive-thru and curbside safety for hot beverages

Assign it

To make sure training doesn’t go by the wayside, make sure that someone owns the task. For small companies this may be the owner, and for large businesses, restaurants, and franchises, this role can be assigned to a designated trainer. Set the expectations for when, where, and how training will take place and make check-ins a part of that employee’s regular support and reviews.

Schedule it

By putting regular training on the work schedule and making it a part of every new employee’s onboarding process, you will ensure that ongoing training happens. For businesses with shift employees who are not all present at the same time, have your assigned trainer come up with a schedule and format that ensures proper procedures are reviewed regularly for every team member. For example, virtual training or video training may work better than in-person training in some settings, in order to facilitate regular access.

Reinforce it

Training and safety education doesn’t end when the safety class is over. As part of making hot beverage safety part of your company culture, regularly reinforce its importance through your words and actions. If you see a dangerous serving issue arise, correct it immediately. Use positive reinforcement as well to comment on safe practices when you see them in action!

We’ve also developed a hot beverage safety poster designed to be placed in clear view of employees brewing and serving hot beverages, to provide quick reference and reinforcement of best practices throughout each shift.

Make it fun

Everyone listens—and remembers—better when information is entertaining. Without making light of the seriousness of burns, find ways to make the training itself enjoyable and memorable with

• Role-playing exercises
• Real-time examples of spills
• Fun contests and quizzes
• Awards
• Personal anecdotes

(And let us know what you come up with! We love to see great training in action.)

We have so much respect for those on the front lines of the business of hot beverages. We wish you the best as you prepare to train your staff to—safely!—bring the delights of coffee and tea to your customers. As pumpkin spice season rolls in, order our hot beverage safety poster today as part of your commitment to high-quality training as a means to prevent spill burns, protect your customers, and protect your business.