Food service hood

Abstract

A protective guard for a food service station provides a barrier between the consumable food items and patrons or customers. The protective guard forms a substantially vertical barrier between the patrons and food. A sliding pin and slot assembly provides movement of the protective guard into a series of positions for providing a limited access for accommodating hands and serving utensils such as tongs or forks, but still imposing a physical barrier above the food items. A pair of brackets flanks the protective guard for guided movement between the closed and open positions. Each bracket has slots for receiving pins attached to the protective guard, and the pins slidably engage the slots for guiding the protective guard to predetermined positions defined by terminal branches or detents in the slots. In this manner, the protective guard attains several positions from completely closed, such as for staff assisted serving, to completely open.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.