Discover how Craft Culinary Concepts increased efficiency with digital food safety monitoring software.
Get your HACCP in
1 hour!
Create Your
Food Safety System
in 15 Minutes
Discover how Craft Culinary Concepts increased efficiency with digital food safety monitoring software.
In December 2024 we sat down with Jacob Tew, a Director of Culinary at Craft Culinary Concepts, to learn how their food safety system has evolved over the last year and a half.
They provide top-tier food service to popular clients across multiple states including Arizona’s State Farm Stadium, the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Texas, Colorado’s Garden of the Gods Visitor & Nature Center, and more.
See how Craft Culinary transitioned from a paper-based to a digital food safety system and how their operational efficiency and team’s speed have improved.
WHAT WE'LL COVER:
In general, change management was the biggest challenge.
“If you’ve been doing something a certain way for so long, people can be a little resistant or hesitant, not sure about it, or maybe even intimidated… But I would say the biggest thing was just getting [the team] to buy into the new system and once they did, the feedback after they actually got rolling was that it’s great and it’s awesome.”
Running a food safety management system on paper also took staff time away from prioritizing the people they serve. Before FoodDocs, Jacob and the other directors were:
“Having to wait until I go visit the property and then ask the staff to stop and take time to find their papers that have been hung up on a clipboard, then they go into a binder and the papers are dirty because they’re working, and they’re trying to save them, basically taking time out of their day.”
Jacob joined Craft Culinary just as the team was getting started with the food safety management software. FoodDocs was a new experience for both him and the rest of the team.
“It’s the first digital food safety program I’d ever been a part of. I’ve always historically in my career used paper, so it was unique and exciting because it’s great to be able to have everything on your phone or tablet and be able to go in and see [the data]… My transition to a digital system, even kind of inheriting it, was pretty smooth. And I think the teams feel the same.”
In Jacob’s career, he’s tried to make paper work for so long, consolidating multiple logs into one paper form to reduce the piles of paper required to properly maintain food safety logs.
But as he highlights, paper-based food safety systems simply can’t “alert you when your coolers go down on your phone.”
Overseeing the food safety status of multiple locations and teams requires visibility and and being able to hold people accountable. Especially with a job that demands travel between locations.
“I’m not always stationed at one locations where I can go in any day and say ‘Hey, let me see your binders and let’s go through your logs for the last 60 days.’ I don’t need to do that anymore. I can see them from afar and also double-check with [team members] when I am on property.”
Instead of waiting hours or days until he gets to a location to look into a given problem, Jacob has the visibility and clarity to have informed conversations more quickly, which is critical for maintaining food safety compliance.
The need to meet (and even exceed) food safety standards is heightened by the fact that many of Craft Culinary’s clients provide services to compromised demographics (e.g., children and elderly people).
“Food safety is a non-negotiable and it always is no matter where you are. Especially in this day and age, there’s all kinds of stuff that can happen with compromised demographics… Honestly, this system has made it a lot easier to have the conversations around [food safety] with the staff.”
One of the Craft Culinary kitchen teams plating dishes for an catering event.
FoodDocs’ Overview dashboard gives the Directors at Craft Culinary the ability to see which locations have food safety tasks that are not being completed (or at least completed properly).
What previously would’ve taken an on-site presence to catch now allows Jacob to identify the specific tasks in question, inquire about the issue, talk through it with the team member, and implement any changes necessary in real-time.
From a food safety culture perspective, FoodDocs’ weekly usage reports have been a great way to get Craft Culinary staff engaged in a way that paper forms cannot.
“I love the weekly usage report… because I share it with all the teams. So every team at every operation gets to see it, see where everyone’s at. It adds a level of we did great, so and so did it. It’s almost a competitive thing and people are engaging with it. And I think those are some of the main reasons that this digital platform is way better than just having paper.”
From the time Jacob’s supervisor was initially getting FoodDocs implemented to the time Jacob was tasked with spearheading the food safety system rollout for his line of businesses, three things stood out about FoodDocs compared to other solutions:
“Karin helped me. She took the time. We were touching base each week. I think that the customer service and the feedback and, honestly, the response time from FoodDocs has really helped it stand apart… the ease of setup communication from from you guys on your end.”
Craft Culinary’s newest account is an aquarium which they added once FoodDocs was already implemented.
“She worked with me step by step and got it set up to mirror exactly what we wanted. It took a day and it was ready, and we were live.”
You notice it the moment you land on Craft Culinary’s website: their culture of putting people first.
“The ROI in itself is keeping people safe in our operations, whether that be an external guest or our staff themselves… [FoodDocs] is a very clean way to do it.”
“Especially in times like now where there’s multiple events every day for some of our accounts serving 200-250 people,” said Jacob, “saving an hour a day is huge.”
He described previous places where he’d worked, with giant operations, that had a metal bar with hooks holding 15 food safety logs. Everyone would have to come, grab one, walk, do their log, come back, and repeat that 10 or 15 times.
“That’s time prepping, that’s time getting the food ready, and taking care of the customer. So 5 hours may not seem like a lot, but in the reality of things, it’s a good amount… It is a big deal.”
The three favorite FoodDocs’ features that Craft Culinary’s team highlighted are:
The combination of customer support and an intuitive food safety app has empowered Jacob to make changes more quickly and even teach some of the Executive Chefs he oversees.
“Karin helped me with [task customization] at first. Like I said, the customer service when I reached out was great. So she showed me how to do it. But now, unless it’s something that I’m not familiar with, I can pretty much go in and just take care of it. But she definitely helped me do that first.
A couple of our accounts have Executive Chefs that I feel comfortable with them having some of the admin stuff. I’m totally comfortable to take 10-15 minutes on a phone call to show them how to add a new item to their equipment list for monitoring, add a new ingredient, change times, change days of the week. So yeah, it’s pretty user friendly.”
Craft Culinary's remote special event catering semi-truck, the Primetime Grill.
Every second counts when you’re prepping food for hundreds of people. The biggest impact FoodDocs has had when it comes to inspections is not having to pause operations to go look for physical sheets of paper away from their stations.
“We had a case the other day where the inspector was coming and needed to see previous reports and ServSafe certificates and everything's in FoodDocs. So you don't have your staff scrambling around to find their service safe certificate or, you know, previous inspection reports for right there for the inspector.”
Jacob shared another experience with a local inspector who showed up at an off-site event where they activated a food truck. In any other business, that likely would’ve meant that they didn’t have their physical ServSafe records.
“We didn't have the paper copy with us because we were working remote. But I pulled them up on FoodDocs in a minute and showed her and that was it. It was right there. So that’s a great tool to have.”
Jacob also likes that teams can upload their documentation in FoodDocs.
“You can you can find previous inspections, you find their food handlers card, the manager's ServSafe card. And in years past at other places, it’s like ‘Oh we forgot to bring it. We don’t have it.’ But it's right there on my phone, if needed. And they like that. They don't like people scrambling around and looking for stuff… It's all right here.”
_edited.jpg?width=900&height=616&name=cook_fooddocs%20(1)_edited.jpg)
“I've also been there as the hourly person that's doing the logs in the early days, and I would have loved to have had something like this when I was doing that.”
Having spent two decades as a chef in the food and beverage industry, FoodDocs would have been a huge help had it existed then.
“I would definitely push people toward a digital platform, recommending obviously FoodDocs based on my experience… The overall ease of use and cleanliness of the program itself has really got our staff engaged in food safety and keeping customers safe.”
In general, food safety software helps you get rid of pen and paper which, as Jacob’s shared, can become unruly and time-consuming.
“If you look at stack of papers and you see a few things missing, it doesn't look like much. But to see that they're at 76% this week, let’s see exactly what was missed. You can pinpoint where those things and what days and what times are happening, you know… It’s literal data right there.”
You can achieve those things and more with FoodDocs. You'll get step-by-step support to mirror exactly your operation needs and an intuitive mobile app that food handlers can easily use.
You can setup your digital food safety platform in 15 minutes. After answering a few questions describing your operations, FoodDocs will automatically generate the most applicable food safety logs and checklists for your team.
This is what our food safety management software looks like in action:
In addition to our Monitoring system, you can benefit from FoodDocs' other product features, including:
Experience the benefits of digital food safety compliance first-hand by starting your 14-day free trial.
Or start by watching this 2-minute explainer video of how FoodDocs works:
And then hop on a call with our team to get a personalized demo of what this looks like for your business's specific SOPs, monitoring checks, and more.
P.S. If you'd like more FoodDocs success stories, check out How Captain Grappo Increased Food Safety Efficiency by 25x and How Terroni Simplified Food Safety with an Easy-to-Use Digital Solution.
See how Gruppo Terroni, a successful restaurant group embraced the benefits of using a digital Food Safety Management System with FoodDocs.
See how Captain Grappo and its Manager, Ruth, use FoodDocs Food Safety Management Software to increase monitoring task efficiency by 25x.
V-Giyan is a plant-based meal delivery company in Oxfordshire. Their mission is to operate in an environmentally friendly way and with the help of...
