Food safety best practices: a helpful guide.

Hello, I’m Elliott, your AI friend in the kitchen. I’m here to help you stay up-beet about food safety, giving you all the tools to ensure your kitchen is compliant.

As a watchful fox, I am all too familiar with the basic principles of culinary care. Food needs to be handled in the correct way as it can contain lots of harmful bacteria. This can make people sick and cause problems for your business.

HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) is the training that helps identify potential food hazards and introduce procedures to prepare and sell food safely. It relies on keeping up-to-date records and reviewing your procedures to ensure they reflect how you work. But how can we make food safety fun and more…digestible? And ensure amazing food hygiene standards are met without overloading everyone with record-keeping, reviewing and checking?

As your claw-some friend, I’m here to help you focus on these key food safety pillars…

1. Cleaning

You know the drill, clean as you go and always keep those work areas spotless. It’s important to develop a robust schedule to make sure all areas of your kitchen will get a rotational deep clean. As a clever little fox I can help with that. Simply set up a Quest and have everyone to fill out their cleaning routines to keep you informed and on top of record-keeping. You can set a time for the cleaning routines to be done. You can also upload all your Standard Operating Procedure information into the app to ensure that everyone in the kitchen knows the best way to do things. Something not right? I can help you set up a Fix-it order. I’m here to make those aspects of food safety so simple that they become second nature.

Great personal hygiene might sometimes escape the average little fox, but not me! I’m passionate about paw-washing to avoid cross-contamination, keeping my claws trimmed and covering my bushy tail. Another germ bites the dust — well, that’s what I say!

2. Food storage

I can sniff out a well-organized fridge at any time of the day or night. I know that clever refrigeration can help avoid big dramas, keep you and your customers safe and prevent food wastage. I like to refer to it as Fridge Management! The lowest shelf should be for your raw meats as the risk of leakage and bacteria is high. The next shelf should be for vegetables and the shelves above for cooked food and dairy products.

You also need to implement a labelling or a colour-coding system so that you are clear on expiry dates. I can help with this. My Work Processes feature lets you digitalize all your paper records, set reminders and establish Fix-it alerts when something is off. My Inventory solution also provides recall logs and alerts direct to your mobile device. A clever fox like me knows that nothing should go unchecked to reduce food waste and airborne illnesses. Peace of mind really can be a piece of cake!

3. Temperature control

You can’t fix what you can’t see, but you can get peas of mind when it comes to temperature control. With clever AI technology, I can monitor the temperature of your fridge, freezers, ovens and even the food! My smart sensors ensure that foods that are meant to be served hot are prepared at the required temperature and food stored at cold temperatures are safe too. No doubt, you’ve heard of the temperature danger zone. It’s a temperature range in which bacteria can grow and multiply. The danger zone ranges from 20- 45 celcius, the optimum temperature for bacteria to grow, and it’s something to be super aware of in the kitchen.

If you’ve got your food storage sorted, how do you know your equipment is of the highest standard and performing in the best way possible? I can provide not only temperature checks, but more detailed performance monitoring to ensure that your fridges and ovens are at their best. This is so important when storing foods like oysters that need to be kept at very specific temperatures. It means no more foxing around when it comes to food safety!

Thermometers are a critical part of food safety in the kitchen, and while my clever AI technology, can help you sniff out the right temperature, monitor a buffet temperature setting and ensure your equipment is cooking and cooling at the right levels; there are still some important uses for a thermometer in the kitchen. When cooking poultry for example, it is important to use a thermometer to measure the thickest part of the meat to ensure it is cooked through and therefore free of any harmful bacteria.

There’s a lot to food safety, right? Doughnut worry, because you can be a coolinary genius without stressing about all the checks and balances you need to do around the kitchen. I can provide up to 1500 temperature readings for your equipment each day, I can use these readings to create reports and real-time monitoring, analysis and alerts. That means if something is off, you will be the first to know about it. In essence, I can sort out your food safety compliance with minute by minute, hour by hour checks so you don’t have to get your tail stuck into tons of paperwork every day. Egg-cellent.

4. Food handling

There are so many ways to contaminate food in your kitchen. Whether it’s about poor handwashing or food preparation issues, as a shrewd fox, I’m here to help you be extra vigilant and careful. Check out the Training features section on the app. It provides you with up-to-date information about the best way to prepare, handle and serve food. You can also use the Work Processes feature to upload all your normal checks, recording them in a digital platform that everyone working in the kitchen can access. Being vigilant, keeping on top of cleaning and being mindful of your processes are all simple things that make a big difference. As you know, it’s often the lentil things that matter!

So if you are looking for an easy-to-install food safety monitoring Saas platform that helps give you a comprehensive picture of your kitchen in real time, I’m here to help. I’m ready to get down to business, make your kitchen more compliant and avoid those un-fox-tunate food safety incidents. And I promise, plenty more claw-some puns!