From fast-food outlets and supermarkets to cafes and bakeries, any business serving and handling food takes hygiene seriously. So how should cash handling and hygiene be approached?
Hygiene Guidelines
For food retail businesses, like greengrocers, butchers and fishmongers, local regulations in most countries are clear on managing food safety and handling cash.
In the first instance, separate staff should be used for working with food and taking payments.
Where this is not possible, employees are expected to either wash their hands between handling food and cash or make sure they do not come into contact with the food at all, by using gloves for example.
But there is another way: closed cash management maintains hygiene standards by eliminating staff interaction with notes and coins altogether.
What is Closed Cash Management?
You can find a full description of closed cash management in another post, but in terms of hygiene closed cash management is significant because it allows customers to pay using self-service terminals.
They simply drop in their coins or feed in their notes and any change is automatically returned to them.
With cash locked securely away and recycled as change when necessary, no one working in the store ever needs to come into contact with banknotes or coins.
How Closed Cash Management Removes Touchpoints with Cash |
| • Self-service payment stations mean only the customer handles the cash |
| • All staff contact with cash inside the store is eliminated |
| • Cash is automatically authenticated and counted so there is no need for manual cash handling at the till and staff can concentrate on customer service |
| • Cash is never exposed in the front or back office |
| • In the back office, staff and managers never have to carry or touch cash as counting and reconciliation happens automatically |
| • Cash does not have to be manually sorted for CIT collection |
Benefits Beyond Hygiene
As well as improved customer service and increased productivity, closed cash management provides the following benefits:
- Reduction of staff involvement in cash handling by up to 95%
- Greater cash process efficiency
- Better end-to-end security
- Fewer robberies and no shrinkage
- Happier staff and customers
- Full control over cash processes
- No cash differences
Want to know more? Contact a cash management expert today.
