By Fred Whipp, Vice President of Business Development at mpro5 - 6.17.2024
Food safety can affect people’s health regardless of age, race, gender, and income level around the world, and lack of compliance in Food Safety and Quality (FSQ) consistently poses significant risks to organizations. Whether it’s tracking ingredient usage or food labels, organizations are constantly trying to maintain compliance standards, while also meeting customer needs.
Thanks to modern advancements in process management as well as advancements in technology such as Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), organizations can now conduct comprehensive audits across all sites in real-time, providing instant visibility of compliance status with automated alerts of any anomalies to trigger corrective actions.
By leveraging technology and intelligent food traceability software, organizations can better streamline their food service operations, simplify critical compliance procedures through clear documentation and achieve Grade A distribution across all establishments. Moreover, food management software can enhance the efficiency of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP systems to simplify the process of implementing and managing food safety protocols.
The Future of Restaurant Success is in Your Favor
Like cooks in the kitchen, technology such as AI and IoT is no longer optional; it’s an essential tool to keep your business afloat in the competitive restaurant industry. The rapid pace of technology can offer incredible opportunities:
- Help minimize FSQ risks from human error
- Keep your team more productive, communicative, and tasks streamlined via digital logbooks
- Provide real-time insights through smart monitoring systems ensuring standards are maintained
- Improve monitoring of the health and safety of both staff and customers
Let’s dive into these areas of opportunity and the ROI they can deliver further.
Auditing Food Safety and Quality
Ensuring safety and quality is paramount for all types of food businesses. Performing daily, digitized audits of critical control points (CCPs) allows for early detection of any quality concerns or food safety issues, such as allergen checks and refrigeration monitoring (don’t you hate it when you accidentally leave the freezer open? Fear no more), to ensure consistently-safe meals and high quality service. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has an online Safe Food Handling guide, as well as a Consumer Complaint system to report reactions or other problems with FDA-regulated food and products.
Regular audits also pinpoint areas for potential improvement across food handling practices, quality control and sanitation procedures, all the while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. Many organizations have bid their farewells to putting pen to paper for manual food checks as it is of course time-consuming and leaves restaurants prone to more errors. Food safety compliance software, like mpro5, makes it easy to track regulatory requirements, conduct compliance audits and maintain ongoing compliance documentation to avoid regulatory violations and penalties.
Additionally, it’s important to note that food businesses must ensure everyone’s on the right page in terms of priorities. With manual processes, one small mistake can jeopardize the integrity of the food and business, leaving something consumers just can’t forgive. By regularly training staff on food safety protocols and quality standards, this can quickly identify root causes of quality issues or non-compliance. Such audits can help document findings and determine whether issues stem from inadequate training, supplier issues, equipment failures, or other factors.
Embracing Digital Logbooks
Transitioning from burdensome paper filing systems (that can oftentimes find you misplacing important pieces of information) to modernized digital logbooks saves time and reduces error for a more efficient and effective approach to restaurant operations. By digitizing and standardizing essential paperwork, management can not only streamline data entry and retrieval processes, but also ensure accuracy and allow for real-time monitoring of essential food safety parameters, such as temperature, humidity and more.
For example, with the use of digital logbooks, food service companies can easily track and manage ingredients, update menus in real-time and ensure accuracy across all locations. This ensures quality standards are met and reduces risk of mislabeled or inaccurate menu items for consumers. Digitalization is not just about the customer experience: there are opportunities to transform behind-the-scenes operations with the right software.
Harnessing IoT Data for Better, Streamlined Operations
IoT sensors can be used to monitor a variety of conditions in real-time, such as temperature, humidity, and air quality indexes. These sensors help unlock actionable insights to improve food process compliance and boost productivity through data-driven decision making that prevents overall risk.
By harnessing the power of IoT data and smart monitoring technologies, food service organizations can seamlessly monitor a variety of CCP factors including temperatures in refrigerators, freezers and food storage areas via IoT-enabled sensors; food inventory levels, expiration dates and usage patterns via IoT-based inventory management systems; and equipment performance and usage including fryers, ovens and, dishwashers via IoT sensors.
Effortless Monitoring of Team and Customer Health & Safety
Effective food service management software grants organizations a new gateway to better focus on health and safety with automated checks, digitized reports and real-time risk assessments. By implementing such checks, it’s easy to indisputably prove continuous compliance and thus, mitigate risk related to FSQ.
Food service management software can serve as a valuable tool for promoting positive team cultures that value health and safety. Food service organizations can utilize it for streamlined communications, automate regular equipment inspections and cleanings across the team, and track health and safety training and certifications.
If you were audited tomorrow, how long would it take to demonstrate that you have effectively eliminated FSQ risks? How confident are you that your data is both accurate and dependable? Intelligent food service management software, like mpro5, plays an essential role in mitigating FSQ risks by offering enhanced reporting, centralized data, simplified workflows, compliance management and more. Implementing such software provides tools for monitoring, control, documenting and reporting that aligns with HACCP standards and allows organizations to uphold their commitment to delivering safe, high-quality food products and services.
Fred Whipp is the Vice President of Business Development at mpro5, the Process Management App and customer-first solution trusted by food service, retail and facilities management. As an experienced business development executive who leads sales conversations with data, Fred is an expert on best practices and digital transformation in facilities management.
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