Did you book your first event? Yay!!! How exciting! I bet you have already started planning what items you are going to bring and packaging you plan to use. If you need some guidance on what to bring to your first event, then we suggest you go here and grab our list of items to bring to your event. Let’s talk about a relatively cheap and easy handwashing station for your next event.
One of the most important things to do when preparing for your first event with food is to contact the local health department where the event will take place. Please do not feel intimidated by the health department. Instead of viewing the local health department as an enemy, think of them as part of your team. The goal of your team is to ensure that your customers receive the best and safest products from you.
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As the business owner event without a storefront, it is your responsibility that you serve your customer high-quality food and that you take every precaution to prevent any contaminants from potentially harming your customers. This is where partnering with the local health department improves quality and safety for your customers.
Whenever we attend an event, our first step is to contact the local health department. We discuss the items we plan to bring and talk about any special precautions or equipment we may need to safely serve our customers.
The most common required equipment for our events is a hand washing station. At first, this sounded intimidating and expensive. Luckily, our local health inspector had some great ideas to help make a cost-effective handwashing station. Today, we are going to tell you how to make this easy handwashing station for your next event
Here is a relatively cheap and easy way to create a temporary handwashing station for your next event. Please be advised that we are not health inspectors and that it is best to contact the local health department to ensure your station meets all requirements.
Items Needed:
- Stainless steel automatic coffee urn
- Trash can with lid
- Liquid soap and dispenser
- Paper towels
- Paper towel holder
- 5- gallon bucket
- Table
Set-Up Your Handwashing Station For Your Next Event
The set-up process is very simple. You will need to start with a table. We used a simple card table. The handwashing station needs to be set up separate from your food items. On the table, we set up our stainless steel automatic coffee urn. Now, most of the time we do not get a location with electricity. This means we must ensure we have enough time to heat up the water for the event.
Also, please note that your coffee urn must provide a steady stream of water that can be turned on or off. In other words, you cannot use an urn that you push to start the water flow like a large Igloo water cooler. It must have a continuous flow of water for the handwashing process.
Next to our water, we set up the soap and paper towels. You must have something to hold your paper towels. You cannot just put the roll on the table. It can easily be knocked off and contaminated. We find that a paper towel holder is the most convenient way to hold the roll. We placed our trash can with a lid next to the handwashing table to collect soiled towels.
The last part of the set-up is your water collection receptacle. We use a 5-gallon bucket. Most city ordinances do not allow you to dump your water down the drain or to let the water freely run down the street to the drains. It is important to find out from the event coordinator if there is a place to dump your water or contact the local city municipal and ask where you can dispose of your water
It really is that simple. We purchased everything we needed directly from Amazon and had it shipped to the kitchen. Like most entrepreneurs, we are busy and do not always have time to run to the store to go shopping. Thank goodness for our Amazon Prime account.
If you do not have an account, do your business a favor and try it here. It never fails, no matter how prepared we are for the event, we always need last-minute items. Thank you Amazon Prime. Now we order it, and two days later, it arrives at the shop.
Look at you! You are one step closer to having a successful table at an event. If you are struggling with pricing for your event, then check out the different resources below that we offer.
We use a formula to help us confidently price all products to ensure we cover our costs and make a profit. It is simple to follow the same formula in your business. Check out the resources below:
FREE Pricing Course: How to take control of your pricing in 3 days
Changing Your Mindset About Pricing
Price Your Cakes To Make Money
Use Our Recipe Pricing Worksheet
We wish you the best of luck at your next event. As an added bonus tip we want to remind you to utilize social media at your event. I know you are going to be crazy busy, but try to go LIVE on a social media account to show off your tasty treats and inviting people to stop by and see you. Good luck!!
