Learn how to handle, prepare, and serve food safely, no matter your work setting.

Learn about important food safety principles:

• identify how food becomes unsafe and leads to foodborne illnesses
• identify when and which symptoms and illnesses must be reported
• recognize proper hand hygiene techniques and good personal grooming habits to prevent food and food-contact surface contamination
• recognize best practices to keep food safe throughout its flow by using time and temperature controls
• describe how to maintain a clean environment and prevent cross-contact

California requires a food handler card within 30 days of hire — regardless of your age, years of experience, or employment status — if you are involved in food preparation, storage, or handling.

This includes:

• wait staff
• chefs and cooks
• bartenders
• hosts/hostesses that handle food
• bussers
• managers, unless certified as food safety managers
• food warehouse stockers
• dishwashers

Conversely, you aren’t required to earn a California food handler card if you work at the following places:

• grocery stores, and grocery store delis, bakeries, meat and produce departments all under one owner
• retail stores where a majority of sales are from a pharmacy
• convenience stores
• commissaries
• certified farmers’ markets
• health care facilities, including hospital employees
• school cafeterias
• temporary food facilities, such as food booths at a community event
• bed and breakfast facilities
• correctional or residential facilities
• elderly nutrition programs

Regardless of these exemptions, however, your employer may still require that you earn a food handler card.