[BCMA] Food at Public Historic Events

Tue Jul 22 12:38:54 PDT 2014

It is TOTALLY happenable! I suspect your director, like one or two of mine, has had a bad experience with a health inspector or has got caught up in the urban myth of nightmarish food-safety regulations. Food Safe is not that scary, and pre-packaged hamburgers and hot dogs are the easiest to deal with. The only time you run into trouble is if you have a lot of dairy or highly-perishable foods, and even then all you need is a way to keep it cold/hot if your event runs more than a few hours. Washrooms aren’t a factor, but ability to wash hands and deal with dirty utensils is. Commercial hand-sanitisers are perfectly acceptable in low-risk food situations (like what you’re planning) if you don’t have running water handy, and if that’s the case just make sure you have plenty of burger flippers on hand in case one gets dropped.. 

You will need to get a temporary food service permit (free) and prepare a food service plan. The permit is available online through the IHA website (I’m guessing Kelowna is IHA?): https://www.interiorhealth.ca/YourEnvironment/FoodSafety/Pages/Permits.aspx. I’m also going to take the liberty of attaching a couple of food service plans I’ve created (sorry if I’m being presumptuous!) for events we’ve done here – one for a low-risk event in a parking lot  at the top of a mountain last fall (no site upgrades required at all, and you can’t get much more basic than that parking lot was!), and the other for our annual Afternoon Tea which is higher-risk foods but held on-site (we have a domestic quality kitchen, but nothing fancier). Feel free to use or ignore.

My advice is to get started right away with a phone call to your local health inspector – in my experience, they are totally willing to help and walk you through the process, and can head off any potential red flags before they start (contrary to the urban-myth thing, they are not trying to shut everyone down!), and then you’ve got time to think about how you’re going to do everything to make sure food is safe. Then go with everything already packaged – grocery-store hamburger patties instead of home-made; the picnic-packs of ketchup, mustard, and relish; that sort of thing. Volunteers baking cookies and cakes is not a problem, we do it every year for our tea, as long as you specify that you are asking for no-uncooked-dairy things (no strawberry shortcake with real whipped cream, for example). But my guess is that you’ll have no problems at all because the foods you’re planning are all clearly in the low-risk category.

Good luck, and please feel free to call or email me directly if there’s anything else I can do to help.

Tammy

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Flags halfTammy Hardwick, Manager

Creston & District Museum & Archives

219 Devon Street, Creston, BC V0B 1G3

Phone 250-428-9262

 <http://www.creston.museum.bc.ca/> www.creston.museum.bc.ca

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From: bcma-bounces at lists.vvv.com [mailto:bcma-bounces at lists.vvv.com] On Behalf Of Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2014 1:27 PM
To: bcma at lists.vvv.com
Subject: [BCMA] Food at Public Historic Events

Hi there,

I am part of the Okanagan Historical Society, a non-profit society, and we were hoping to have a fundraising BBQ and bake sale at the Father Pandosy Mission heritage site here in Kelowna. 

The other day one of our Directors said that this could not happen due to Food Safe regulations. I was wondering if any of the museums in BC have faced something similar? I have been to lots of events where food/ snacks have been sold to the public without incident at historic sites. It was indicated that to elevate the site to standard would cost too much money and would not be feasible… We had proposed to have pre-cooked hamburgers and hotdogs with topping on the BBQ and to have an ‘old fashioned’ bake sale. I understand the need to have someone with Food Safe tending to the food but do not understand the other regulations as far as washroom facilities etc. go… The event is to be held at the end of August from 11am-3pm.

Any advice about having food at a public event at an historic site would be greatly appreciated! 

Thank you so much!

Tracy Satin

Okanagan Historical Society

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