Broken glass procedure for a restaurant: the ice bin, the line and the floor

A bartender scoops ice with a pint glass and the rim chips. A wine glass tips off a tray onto the pass. A jar of pickles slips out of a cook's hand above the prep table. Glass breaks in every restaurant, and most of the time it's a sweep and a shrug. The time it isn't is when a sliver lands where food or ice is, and nobody can say for certain where every piece went.

This post gives you one procedure for every kind of breakage, a kit to keep ready, a breakage log and the habits that make glass in food much less likely.

General information. Your state or local health department enforces its own edition of the Food Code. Section numbers below are from the FDA Food Code 2026.

Why the answer is always "throw it out"

The Food Code is short on this. Food "shall be safe, unADULTERATED" (§3-101.11), and food that is unsafe or adulterated "shall be discarded or reconditioned according to an APPROVED procedure" (§3-701.11(A)). Ice counts as food: the Code's definition of food includes "ice", and ice used as food is made from drinking water (§3-202.16). The Food Code's guidance on hazards lists glass from "Bottles, jars, lights, utensils, gauge covers" among the main physical hazards, with injuries such as "Cuts, bleeding; may require surgery to find or remove" (Annex 4, Table 3).

You can't inspect a pan of salad or a bin of ice and be sure it's free of slivers. So any food or ice that might have glass in it is thrown out. There's no "pick it out" option.

The procedure

Print it and post it at the bar, the dish area and the line.

[Café / restaurant name] — When glass breaks

1. Stop and say it. Call "Glass!" so everyone nearby stops and looks. Keep guests and staff away from the area. Nobody reaches into a bin, a sink or a pile with bare hands.

2. Close off the area. Stop using the station, the ice bin or the table. Put up a wet-floor sign or a chair if it's on the floor.

3. Decide what might be touched. Everything within [6 feet] of the break, and anything below it, counts as contaminated: food, ice, open containers, garnishes, clean plates and glasses, cutting boards.

4. Throw out the food and ice. Discard every item from step 3. Write it on the breakage log.

5. Pick up and sweep. Put on [cut-resistant gloves]. Pick up large pieces first, sweep up the rest with the glass kit's brush and pan, then use [a damp paper towel / bread / a damp pad] for the slivers. Glass goes into the [labeled glass bucket / a box taped shut], never into a trash bag someone will press down.

6. Clean and sanitize. Wash, rinse and sanitize every surface, utensil and piece of equipment in the area, and run anything washable through the dish machine.

7. Check before you restart. The manager looks over the area with a flashlight held low, to catch the shine on slivers. Only then does the station reopen.

8. Log it. Fill in the breakage log. If anyone was hurt, also fill in an incident report.

The 6-foot zone in step 3 is a house rule, not a Food Code number: glass travels, so pick a distance your kitchen can live with and stick to it.

Glass in the ice bin

This one gets its own steps, because ice hides glass so well.

Glass in the ice: burn the bin

1. Stop using the bin. Put a sign on it: Do not use: glass.
2. Empty it completely. Melt the ice with hot water ("burn the ice") down the drain. Don't scoop it out into another bin or a bucket.
3. Pick out what glass you can see, with gloves, before you run more water, so it doesn't wash into the drain.
4. Wash, rinse and sanitize the inside of the bin, the scoop and its holder, and the lid.
5. Check with a flashlight, low and from several angles, then fill it from the ice machine.
6. If the glass may have reached glasses already filled, or the bar well, throw those out too.
7. Log it.

Until the bin is back: [bagged ice from the walk-in freezer / the ice machine's bin, scooped with a clean scoop]. Have a plan, because a bar on a Friday night will be tempted to skip step 2.

The habits that stop it:

• Never scoop ice with a glass. Use a scoop, every time, and keep it in a holder outside the bin between uses. The Food Code allows a scoop used only with food that isn't time/temperature controlled, such as ice, to be stored in "a clean, protected location" (§3-304.12(E)). Ask your health department how it wants scoops stored.
• No glassware stored above the ice bin, and no chilling bottles in the ice you serve: ice used to chill the outside of bottles, cans or food can't then be used as food (§3-303.11).
• Rack glasses where they can't fall into the bin.

Our ice machine cleaning post covers the machine itself.

Glass on the line or in prep

• Everything in the zone goes: open pans on the line, the mise en place on the board, garnish trays, anything in the reach-in if the door was open.
• Cooked food on the stove or in the fryer within reach of the break goes too.
• Clean plates and glasses stacked nearby go to the dish area.
• Tell expo and the floor which dishes will be late, so nobody pushes the line to "just plate it."

Glass on the floor in the dining room

• Move guests away from the area, politely and quickly. Offer to move the table.
• Sweep it, then wipe the floor with a damp cloth or mop to pick up slivers, and dry it.
• Check the tables next to it: food or drinks on them within reach of the break are replaced, no charge.
• OSHA asks employers to keep walking surfaces "free of hazards such as sharp or protruding objects" (29 CFR 1910.22(a)(3)). That's why a sweep alone isn't the end of it.

Glass on a guest's plate, or a guest finds glass

1. Take the plate away, apologize, and get the manager. Ask whether the guest has swallowed anything or is hurt. If they're hurt or unwell, call for help and look after them first.
2. Keep the piece of glass and the plate in a sealed bag or container, labeled with the time and table. Don't throw it away.
3. Stop service of that dish and find out where the glass came from: check the station, the pan, the batch, the ice.
4. Throw out the rest of that batch and anything else that might be contaminated.
5. Fill in the incident report and the breakage log, and note what the guest was told and offered. Call your insurer if the guest was hurt.
6. If the glass came from a product (a jar, a bottle), keep the container and the lot code and tell the supplier. If it was a packaged product, our food recall checklist (coming Oct 28) covers the next steps.

The glass kit

One kit at the bar, one in the kitchen, in a labeled bin that nobody borrows.

• [ ] Cut-resistant gloves (two pairs)
• [ ] A dedicated brush and dustpan, labeled Glass only
• [ ] A flashlight
• [ ] Damp paper towels or sticky pads for slivers
• [ ] A rigid, labeled container or box for broken glass
• [ ] Do not use: glass signs (for the ice bin, the station)
• [ ] A copy of this procedure
• [ ] Breakage log sheets

Check it on the opening checklist once a week. A kit with no gloves is how someone ends up reaching into an ice bin barehanded.

The breakage log

[Café / restaurant name] — Glass breakage log

Reviewed monthly by: ………………………… on ……………

Read the "Cause and fix" column once a month. The same station, the same glass, the same time of night keep coming up: that's where the fix is.

Preventing it

Your broken glass checklist

• [ ] The procedure posted at the bar, line and dish area
• [ ] A glass kit at the bar and in the kitchen, checked weekly
• [ ] Everyone knows to call "Glass!" and stop
• [ ] Ice scoops only, never a glass; scoops kept in a holder outside the bin
• [ ] Burn-the-bin steps known by every bartender and server
• [ ] Food and ice in the zone always thrown out
• [ ] Shielded bulbs over food and clean equipment
• [ ] A breakage log, read monthly

Where Mays fits

• The procedure on every phone. Put this procedure in a Knowledge Base folder shared with the bar and the kitchen, so it's in the app's Knowledge tab. See Your knowledge base.
• The breakage, written down. Post it in the Logbook under Incidents (or Health & Safety), with Needs follow-up ticked if something still has to be done, such as replacing a shield. The location's other managers and admins get a notification. See The manager logbook.
• The clean-up, signed off. A manager can create a one-off task in the app, such as Ice bin burned, washed, sanitized, checked, with the Photo answer type and assigned to the bartender, so the photo of the clean, empty bin is on record. See Creating one-off tasks.
• The kit check. Add Glass kit complete (gloves, brush, flashlight, signs) to a Weekly opening checklist. See Creating a checklist template.

What Mays doesn't do: the Logbook is text only, with no photos, and managers can't mark a follow-up done yet (reply on the entry to say it's sorted). The Logbook is for managers and admins; staff tell their manager, or fill in the paper log.

Glass breaks; the procedure shouldn't

Stop and say it, close off the area, throw out the food and ice, clean and check, then start again, and write it down. A bartender who burns a full bin on a busy Friday without arguing is the sign the procedure is working.

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