How to Buy Food Safety Management Software: Step-By-Step Guide

Follow these 8 steps to cover everything from understanding business needs to choosing a food safety management vendor.

This step-by-step buyer’s guide will help give you a clear path to finding the best solution that meets your needs. You can skip the intro and jump right to the steps of buying food safety management software.

Over the years, there have been incredible advancements in the food industry technology. But it’s startling how slowly our industry has adopted digital tools to enhance operational efficiency and improve food safety.

Instead, food businesses still use outdated food safety management processes — pen and paper being the most popular — that put their compliance and customers’ lives at risk.

A talk about audit-readiness from Quality Assurance Magazine used this in a presentation…

Why do paper-based food systems become unmanageable?

Paper-based food safety systems can lead to significant inconsistencies. Here are just some:

• Staff can forget to complete monitoring checks
• Staff might not fill them out completely
• Not everyone has legible handwriting
• Physical documents can easily be damaged or misplaced
• Version control becomes hard to maintain

We empathize with food service and production companies. Maintaining food safety compliance can be stressful enough without surprise visits from inspectors.

This is why food safety management software exists

Our guide specifically will walk you through how to choose and buy the right digital solution to save businesses like yours time and money on:

• Vetting software
• Aligning it to your needs
• And implementing the system

… the first time.

To get there, it’s necessary to understand why so many food businesses are hesitant to go digital.

What is the biggest worry companies have about food safety software?

The biggest concern regarding food safety software is whether or not staff can adapt to a digital solution. However, neglecting digital solutions increases the risk of non-compliance, which could lead to fines, closures, or customers getting sick or worse.

Our team has spoken to thousands of food safety stakeholders from restaurants to food production companies and one theme runs through them all: change is hard.

Whether due to years of using pen-and-paper systems or lack of tech-savviness, chefs and managers alike acknowledge that the longer you’ve done something, the harder it is to change. That’s what makes transitioning to a digital platform seem daunting.

But we’ll show you how to overcome these change management hurdles (and more) in the next sections.

8 Steps to buying the right food safety management software

Step 1: Understand your business needs for food safety management software

Every business is different but generally, there are four questions you can ask to gain a holistic understanding of your business.

What are the most significant pain points in your food safety processes?

In other words, what are staff struggling with most when it comes to food safety? This list could grow quite quickly, especially if you’re getting input from every department. It’s helpful to try and group issues together. In our conversations with companies searching for a digital food safety monitoring system, common issues are:

Unmanageable recordkeeping and documentation

Pens, papers, binders… they’re prone to damage, easy to lose, and can quickly take up space. Paper-based systems are also subject to human error, from poor handwriting to incorrect temperature log inputs.

Poor time management

During peak hours or seasons, staff may overlook food safety checks in favor of other demands related to production or customer service. Unfortunately, if you need to run to and from a clipboard wall to grab various logs, balancing food safety tasks with other operational responsibilities often leads to shortcuts or oversight that can result in food safety incidents.

Inconsistent training and staff adoption

When things are out of sight, they’re usually out of mind and proper food safety practices are no exception. Chances are food safety training modules are next to the same recordkeeping binders we mentioned earlier. It’s also impossible to see the exact moment a food safety issue arises by looking at a pile of paper. All this makes it incredibly hard to manage and enforce consistent food safety practices.

Does this digital food safety solution complement our existing systems?

Monitoring temperatures is a pillar of any food safety business whether it’s fridges, freezers, cold holding, hot holding, etc. You may already use temperature sensors for remote monitoring but still record those temperatures on paper logs.

As you search for the right solution, you should consider whether it can integrate with your remote sensors through an API, for example. If it can, then that’s a major food safety process you can add a level of automation to while minimizing human errors.

Another key consideration is whether or not the solution your exploring caters to your niche (i.e., food safety management) or if it serves a wide range of industries. The latter isn’t necessarily negative. However, a company that specializes in food safety management software will likely be able to better understand your needs and provide more tailored solutions.

Is the food safety management software easy to use?

Let’s face it: no one wants to use a clunky, ugly, hard-to-navigate food safety app. We suggest to help ensure adoption from the start, the food safety app you choose should not only have a clear, intuitive design but also simplify the process of:

• Daily task completion for food handlers
• Overseeing real-time compliance for managers

Maintaining food safety compliance is challenging enough as it is. The software you choose should remove barriers, not add more of them.

Step 2: Identify the stakeholders who need to be involved

Who are the key stakeholders? Not just the Food Safety or Quality Managers and the staff who will use the food safety apps daily. But the individuals who will have to vet and ultimately approve the solution that’s best for your business. This could be someone from:

• Legal (Does the digital tool keep documents secure? What data is stored?)
• IT (Is any integrations or software support needed?)
• Finance (What budget can you allocate to food safety software?)
• Subject matter experts (Is there a person other than you who understands the ins and outs of how food safety management software affects the business?)
• End users (Who will interact with the product daily? This doesn’t need to involve everyone and could also be a subject matter expert.)

No matter where they sit within the business, these people will help champion your initiative.

Step 3: Determine your food safety software budget

The budget required for a proper digital Food Safety Management System (FSMS) varies from four to five figures per year depending on your business’s unique needs.

If you don’t already know your budget range, now is a good time to connect with that key stakeholder (i.e., Finance) and align on the desired and maximum price points you’re working with. Doing this will also play a factor in the food safety management vendors you can and cannot entertain.

Depending on the business’s financial situation, consider these questions:

• Is there even enough money in your budget to support digital food safety initiatives?
• Can you pull extra funding from elsewhere in the company?
• Do you want to invest in food safety consultants, an on-premises system, or cloud-based software?

This brings us to the next part of the journey…

Step 4: Justify the budget required for food safety management software to key stakeholders

Unfortunately, “the software will keep customers safe” will not be enough to get financial buy-in. While keeping people safe is a driving force behind this food safety initiative, you’ll have to make a business case.

Tell a story using a before and after structure. We suggest breaking your rationale for switching from a paper-based to digital food safety system into two categories:

First, how much time will managers save?

Here’s an example from a customer of ours, Captain Grappo Gluten-Free Foods. Before going digital, Ruth the Store Manager would spend two hours every day manually supervising monitoring tasks.

With FoodDocs, Ruth says:

“Now I can sit down and it's just all there in one place. It takes me 5-10 minutes.”

10 minutes a day versus 120 minutes day is a 25x increase in supervisory efficiency. That’s 60 hours a month (or 720 hours a year) saved in labor that would otherwise be spent on paper-based food safety management. (See the food safety success story!)

Financially, using a U.S. Quality Manager’s average hourly rate of $45.67, FoodDocs digital Food Safety Management System helps save the equivalent of $23,738 over a year.

Now how about non-managerial staff?

Second, how much time will kitchen teams or production line staff save?

Another customer had 5-7 employees spending 40-60 hours per month manually filling paper checks related to thermometer calibrations, daily tests, temperature checks, and traceability logs.

Taking an average hourly wage of $15/hour for the workers handling the paperwork, the monthly labor costs amount to $600 to $900. Over the course of year, those paper-based labor costs add up to $7,200 to $10,800.

By switching to a digital food safety system such as FoodDocs, they can reduce the amount of time spent on paperwork by 10-20% on average.

That time savings translates into 8-18 hours per month instead of 40-60. The cost savings also decrease significantly to $120-$270 per month ($1,440-$3,240 annually).

On FoodDocs’ Enterprise plan, between an annual subscription and a one-time onboarding fee, the cost of going digital is:

In addition to the time and money businesses can save by going digital, there’s also the fact that you won’t require paper any longer. Digital food safety management software will give you the ability to:

• Store documents safely in the cloud
• Access to logs 24/7 in case of inspectors, audits or recalls
• Easily maintain compliance with regulatory standards

Step 5: Research the best digital food safety management solutions

The research phase may look different from person to person. But here are some practical starting points:

• Speak to industry peers: You have approved suppliers. Why not ask what food safety management software they use? The opinion of a trusted source is arguably worth more than a stranger online.
• Conduct online searches: Google, ChatGPT, and industry forums such as ISFQN are all great resources to get a quick and quality list of food safety management software. Of course, you’ll be vetting them personally with your team or food safety consultant. But these online tools are a great way to get a list fast.
• Check out online review sites: Companies such as G2 and Capterra aggregate results across hundreds of industries, so it’s not as personalized. But seeing a company’s star rating and customer reviews will give you a quick gut check and confirm whether or not you should spend time looking into a company further.

Can I execute this phase on my own?

Yes, but we highly recommend that you don’t do it in a silo. Now that you know who the key stakeholders will be (since you completed Phase 1), share your list of software solutions early on.

Step 6: Evaluate your food safety software vendor shortlist

Let’s assume you’ve got your initial shortlist of vendors. Create a table similar to the one below that gives a high-level overview of some key components of each food safety software. Even if you don’t have the information for a specific line item yet, note that you’ll add the information as it becomes available.

For example, while the FoodDocs pricing plans are available on their website, other solutions often require booking a meeting to learn more about pricing structures. In the case of another solution’s table, you’d simply put “N/A” or “To be confirmed”.

If a company has put them together, you can include food safety software comparisons. Take ours, for example:

• FoodDocs vs FoodReady
• FoodDocs vs Alert65
• FoodDocs vs Xenia
• FoodDocs vs Navitas Safety
• FoodDocs vs Trail App

Making sure you have executive alignment as early as possible will save you time and money in the long run.

Step 7: Take advantage of free trials and product demos

You don’t need to prove yourself to vendors; vendors need to prove themselves to you.

If free trials and demos are available, take advantage! Food safety management software such as Alert65 and Navitas Safety do not readily offer free trials. FoodDocs and some other vendors do have 14-day free trials.

If you're strapped for time and can't commit to a 30-minute demo right away, see if the vendor has any on-demand videos like our How Does FoodDocs Work? explainer video library, which includes a mini (9-minute) demo:

Why does this matter?

First off, your time is valuable. Accessing a free trial allows you to try the software firsthand. You can see if the desktop and/or mobile app feels as “easy” as a vendor says it is.

As you input monitoring tasks, complete them, see the reporting and whatever else you might trial, you’ll:

• Gain a better understanding of the software’s capabilities
• Get real, tangible experience with something your team could be using daily
• Come to demos with thoughtful, practical questions to maximize your research time

Not every stakeholder needs to attend product demos, but you shouldn’t go into demos alone either. Consider inviting your subject matter expert and/or an end user who’ll be using the food safety software daily.

If possible, ask the person delivering the product demo to record it so you can share it with stakeholders who aren’t in attendance. It’ll be helpful to reference later as sometimes demos can be a lot of information to take in and require time to process effectively.

Step 8: Make a final decision to purchase your food safety management software of choice

We mentioned at the beginning of this guide that choosing the wrong food safety management software can result in time and money lost, as well as heightened risks of non-compliance.

As you and your team select the best vendor for your business, it’s important to stay objective. Revisit the product comparison tables, the ROI calculations, and the pros and cons of each software. If there were any red flags with your top one or two choices, have the companies sufficiently addressed your concerns?

Get answers to these questions before committing.

And, of course, make sure you contact the vendors you’re not choosing so that all parties involved are able to close the loop.

What happens next?

When you’ve said “yes” to a vendor and made necessary the payment, it’s time for onboarding and implementation! The steps involved in this process will vary from vendor to vendor. At FoodDocs, here’s an example of what our typical onboarding experience looks like:

• Day 1 — Defining scope: Covering your food safety requirements according to your specific needs, and review of existing workflows.
• Day 4 — Monitoring setup: Setting up the Monitoring System, including the 5 most critical tasks. Inviting the first team members to use the Mobile App.
• Day 7 — Customizing your monitoring system: Customizing the Monitoring systems and adding additional or more complicated tasks.
• Day 12 — Traceability system: Setting up the Traceability System, Product-related monitoring, mockup of recall, and reporting.
• Day 30 — HACCP: Setting up the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points), SOPs (Standard Operational Procedures) and PRPs (Prerequisite Programs). Customization of these documents.
• Day 45 — Final touch: Introduction to your Customer Success Manager.

Depending on your business’s specific needs and availability, we can easily adjust timelines. Regardless, we highlight exactly what your onboarding experience will include:

• A dedicated Onboarding Manager guiding you through every step
• A personalized workflow design based on your unique business processes
• Expert data migration and account configuration support
• A dedicated Customer Success Manager after onboarding is complete

Ready to map your food safety needs and calculate how much going digital will save your business?

Additional food safety software buying tips

6 Key features to fook for in food safety management software

FoodDocs offers many food safety features, but these are critical ones that vendors should have:

1. HACCP Plan module: FoodDocs’ AI-powered HACCP Plan builder automatically defines CCPs, creates SOPs, builds a HACCP flow chart, and gives you this necessary compliance-ready document in an hour (saving ~120 working hours).
2. Monitoring system and mobile app: Easily create, adjust, and complete personalized monitoring tasks with the help of an easy-to-use food safety mobile app. After completing your company’s profile with a handful of questions, you can switch to digital food safety in just 15 minutes and save 20% of your time on daily supervision.
3. Traceability: If needed, FoodDocs’ Traceability system helps to track your ingredients and food items through all stages of production. We built the software so you can complete a traceability log and attach a monitoring task to that traceability log right away. This feature helps you ensure high-quality food safety and protects you in case of food recalls.
4. Audits: Create, schedule, complete, and manage food safety audits. Promote team accountability with the help of custom audits that you can notify staff of and perform on the mobile app.
5. Document management: Upload and store all your team-related documents such as food safety training documents, health certificates, and permits in our cloud service. Add their due dates to get notified when any of your documents are about to expire.
6. Team management: When setting up your team, use role-based tasks to assign specific food safety tasks to relevant team members. Each team member will see only the tasks pertinent to them on that day. You can also limit the access according to your team’s roles, whether admin or monitoring.
7. Integration: Integrate our system with smart devices and IoT temperature sensors, making monitoring faster and keeping all your food safety management information accessible from one dashboard. Automatically synced data helps you save time and avoid switching between different solutions.

Frequently asked questions about buying food safety management software