Improper food safety practices can cost a brand on multiple levels. For one, it can lead to food waste, but more importantly, a foodborne illness outbreak can be a black eye that a brand carries for years. But getting staff up to speed on proper food safety techniques is challenging, and multiplied across an entire brand, it becomes exponentially more difficult.
Typically, kitchen staff shoulder a huge responsibility when it comes to ensuring food safety integrity, and they must be put in a position to be successful. Training is a major part of ensuring workers are educated on what good kitchen practices look like, but it’s no longer the only line of defense. New back of house technology drives accuracy and efficiency in temperature logs, labeling, inventory, and various other capacities that aid a brand’s effort in eliminating food safety concerns.
“Ninety percent of food safety failures don’t happen because restaurant employees are lazy,” says Rich Lopez. “They happen because employees didn’t have access to information at a pivotal moment in time.”
So how, exactly, can back of house technology transform a brand’s food safety? Here’s an example: Lopez was recently conducting an evaluation of how TransAct Tech’s app was functioning on the ground level of a brand partner’s 7-unit footprint. He happened to be in a storefront at the same time a Department of Health inspector was. The inspector expressed to Lopez how much the brand had turned things around since implementing TransAct’s BOHA! system.
“He said, first, the employees never used to be able to say what temperature the refrigeration units were at because they weren’t checking them,” Lopez says. “With our system, a detailed log is kept that reports temperature back to staff, so that was taken care of.”
A second place the inspector had seen vast improvement was in the labeling of food in walk-in coolers. “Before, the inspector had trouble reading the handwriting of whoever had prepped the food,” Lopez says, “and that made it hard to verify if it was clear what the food was or when it was set to expire.”
An automated labeling system requires zero handwritten logs, or calculations done by staff. The employee selects an ingredient, presses the print button, and a label is printed. That keeps food organization consistent and eliminates opportunity for human error.
Another feature operators enjoy is the fact that BOHA! Tracks walk-in cooler temperatures and sends out a series of alerts if it ever rises or falls to an unsafe temperature. First an email is sent to the manager on duty, and if nothing changes after an hour, a notification is sent to the regional manager, and on up the chain until an email makes its way to the c-suite.
“One of the reasons our clients really like us is that we’re a one-stop shop,” Lopez says. “TransAct’s BOHA! takes ten error prone labor tasks and makes them worry-free. We help brands become better at handling food, plain and simple.”
By Charlie Pogacar