6 reasons to follow food safety guidelines with a digital HACCP

Are digital food safety plans better than paper ones? Are they secure? Are they accepted by authorities?

We know the answer. And we want you to make up your own mind. So before approaching the question of form, let's look into why we need food safety guidelines in the first place.

Why is food safety important?

The food we eat usually ends up on our plate after a long journey. Whether buying a snack from a snack bar or ordering a steak at a restaurant, you don't want to become affected by a foodborne illness after enjoying your meal.

You can get food poisoning from viruses, bacteria and parasites that have found their way into the food. Contaminated food comes with two sets of cost to the food handler:

1. The human cost. You will break the image of your establishment and the trust of your customers. As a business, you need to make sure that your raw meat, poultry, seafood and your ready to eat foods are all equally safe to eat. The more you keep harmful bacteria at bay, the more good rep your business gathers. It is easy math.
   
   
2. The financial cost. As contaminated food can make people very ill, the direct cost of food recalls ranges from significant to catastrophic. In case of a severe mishap, you need to halt your entire food production process, conduct an examination, alert all necessary agencies, companies in the supply line and the general public. The numbers get high pretty fast.
   
   
   

My hands are always clean - how else can I keep food safe?

Having a HACCP plan in place helps to guarantee that your food does not carry a foodborne illness, that your meat and poultry are safe for everyone to consume, and that the food that you serve will not hurt people.

You can wash your hands with hot soapy water. You can let your hands, cutlery and vegetables soak under running water for a long time. But all that is not enough.

There are plenty of ways for your food to get contaminated. Here are some of them:

• an unscented liquid chlorine bleach gets into food
• unscented liquid contaminates another ingredient
• minimum internal temperature for meat gets messed up
• incorrect cleaning of cutting boards
• meat and poultry kept at wrong temperatures
• main safety steps (clean, separate, cook, and chill) not fully followed
• safe minimum cooking temperatures not followed
• ground beef, pork, lamb not cooked to 165 °F
• your food thermometer not measuring correctly
• food frozen at wrong temperature
• perishable food not consumed within 2 hours and left outside the fridge

And there are more. But please don't get scared. As a food handler, it is your duty to keep food safe. Hot soapy water is good but to fully ensure food safety, you need a top-notch tool.

Digital guidelines as a business tool

Having a HACCP system in place helps to prevent biological, chemical, and physical contamination of the food you serve. It helps to keep food and your customers safe.

Switching to a digital HACCP helps to ensure all of that even better. How, you ask? Because a digital system like FoodDocs allows you to:

• Collect data in real-time and enter it quickly
• Assign tasks to specific people, so that nothing gets overlooked
• Get automatic notifications when measurements are out of range
• Have all data immediately ready for inspectors
• Get email updates about necessary changes

FoodDocs as a smart way to safe food handling

Why are so many companies switching to digital monitoring systems? The answer is easy. Digital food safety solutions have the same purpose as accounting software: to help your company create, monitor, and manage its daily tasks. To make processes more efficient. And the all important one - reduce mistakes.

Food safety documentation is a time-consuming process. There are many tasks that tend to get forgotten. Even on a daily basis. A few lapses of memory or forgetting to check your food thermometer can turn your beef, pork, lamb or veal from a delicious meal to a massive headache in no time. (Not to speak of the stomach ache!)

Paper-based safety guidelines cannot guarantee a high level of safety because there are too many details to take in. HACCP plans are usually over 100 pages long, and no one can keep track of all that. FoodDocs to the rescue!

What are the benefits of a digital HACCP plan?

1. You do not need to hire a food safety specialist to open your food business

FoodDocs helps you create a HACCP plan that meets your exact requirements. Our software operates on artificial intelligence filters that help to recognize what is important to ensure food safety in your food establishment. With a digital plan, you can open your business as soon as you are ready!

2. It saves time!

How long does it take you to get a food safety status report of your business? Hiring a food safety supervisor or a consultant who supplies you with all the required documents can easily take up to a month.

FoodDocs helps you to save time and money since you can get your HACCP done over lunch - in 1 hour.

3. Improves staff training and team management

Using FoodDocs helps your employees better understand your specific food safety requirements and why it is important to follow them. You will spend less time educating your staff because you can add relevant instructions and videos to the task, making briefing new staff quick.

You can add any videos you need, from instructional procedures related to ground meats, fully cooked food, or how to treat poultry, seafood and eggs in your kitchen. Or how to act when a freezer malfunctions.

If your new team member speaks another language - not a problem! Our app and desktop dashboard are available in 7 different languages.

4. Your entire food safety system is in one place

Our digital platform covers all essential tasks, including the HACCP plan, monitoring checks and audits, and the system can be integrated with various other solutions.

This means that everything you need is always easily accessible from one place. Nothing gets lost. And it is always easy and quick to make changes. Want to add monitoring tasks? Not a problem. Need to make sure all your fridges are operating at a needed temperature? Instant overview! Afraid you might forget a task? We send you notifications.

5. Strengthens your brand

FoodDocs helps to increase brand confidence among your customers. This means that your customers will trust you and know that your food is safe to eat. It has been proven that FoodDocs’ quality mark on a menu or a take away bag helps to increase sales by up to 15%.

6. Flexibility to change your HACCP content at any time

And last but not least! When a food inspector pays you a surprise visit, you can quickly provide them with all the necessary documentation. Your papers will not be lost, dirty or (accidentally) tempered with. And if the inspector points something out, you can easily change the autogenerated content to match the details identified by the inspector.

With a digital food safety system, you will always have a peaceful mind that all your food safety documents are compiled according to the law, and that all the necessary requirements are fulfilled.

Pretty epic!