Restaurant Kitchen FloorsMaintaining safe restaurant kitchen floors is all important to the prevention of slip and fall accidents. More than three million food service employees and over one million guests are injured annually as a result of restaurant slip and fall accidents, according to the National Floor Safety Institute. The National Floor Safety Institute indicates that the industry spends over two billion dollars on such injuries each year and that these injuries are increasing at a rate of about 10% annually. According to the National Restaurant Association, slip and fall accidents are the greatest source of general liability claims within the restaurant industry. According to the National Safety Council, slip and falls constitute one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
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Young people and teens are working in restaurant kitchens more and more. Simple water left on the floor can cause great injury. Kitchen floors can be treated with a special etching process which will create a greater coefficient of friction or slip resistance. The floor must be cleaned with the correct products that do not allow a greasy buildup. If treated floors are allowed to become coated with grease and cooking oils, then overtime they no longer will be slip resistant. To a restaurant employer the phrase "slip-and-fall accident" means the most common employee hazard and the most frequent cause behind a workers' compensation claim. That trend still is pretty much the case, but new research by a restaurant insurance group indicates that liability costs related to customers" slipping, tripping or falling on a restaurant's premises may be a little-noticed expense that is raising insurance and operating costs among commercial restaurants. Perhaps surprising, too, is a second insurance research group's annual assessment of employee slips and falls, which found that hundreds of workers had a close brush with a slip or fall but caught themselves. However, those accident averters did not tell their employers about the dangerous conditions that required corrective action, which resulted in preventable costs and lost time when co-workers did injure themselves later. Restaurant Insurance Corp., a Greenwood Village, Colo., insurance brokerage that specializes in varied policies exclusively for smaller operators, was one of the two firms that coincidentally and independently offered a sobering but alarming financial assessment of the costs of slips and falls by patrons and employees. Restaurant Insurance Corp. analyzed 3,800 general liability, property and workers’ compensation claims filed between January 2002 and October 2004. Of them, 2,332 were general liability; 932 were workers’ compensation; and 530 were property claims. Almost 40 percent of the general liability claims were related to slips, trips and falls. Those 908 claims cost restaurants $3.2 million, or an average $3,550 per establishment. The average cost for the 249 workers’ compensation claims for the same kinds of accidents was $5,386. Restaurant Insurance Corp. recommends that foodservice operators survey facility design and floor material to pinpoint spots where falls could occur. Additionally, restaurants should develop a comprehensive plan to prevent slip and fall accidents.
The other group, commercial insurer Liberty Mutual, in its annual Workplace Safety Index review, reported that employee slip-and-fall accidents in all industries hit an all-time high in 2002, the latest year for which figures are available, of $6.2 billion, up from $5.7 billion the year before. Restaurant Insurance Corp., or RIC, estimated that every time a guest injures himself from a slip, trip or fall on a restaurant's premises, it pays about $3,550 in liability costs. Restaurateurs need to look at their slip, trip and fall hazards and take steps to ensure that safe flooring, adequate lighting and quick spill-cleanup routines are in place, said Paul Giunto, RIC's president and chief executive. Taking all precautions will help to avoid that large settlement and one step that can be taken is the slip resistant floor treatment for tile floors of any kind. The coefficient of friction can be measured both before and after the treatment. The floor can be checked on a periodic basis to insure that the coefficient of friction is still high. Buildups of grease or cleaning products can cause lower readings and so it is important to clean with the proper products.
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