Introducing Technology to Promote Food Safety Culture

Technologies positively contribute to the creation and dissemination of an effective food safety culture in restaurants.

FREMONT, CA: Food safety culture is about increasing awareness and making employees understand why food safety is vital to their customers. However, a food safety culture is developed if a company invests time, money, and resources. This involves addressing people’s demands, beliefs, attitudes, values, practices, and behaviors. Science and technology have opened many opportunities to enhance and ensure food safety. Firms in the food industry, whether manufacturing, distributing, or serving food, have an investment in always making sure they are safe. Here are a few ways technology can ensure the safety and sanitation of the restaurant.

• Monitoring Temperature

In running a restaurant, a restaurant operator wants to deal with is a foodborne illness complaint. That’s why it is important to ensure that food is chilled or heated to safe food temperatures. Most food safety technology firms offer temperature monitoring. Instead of manually checking the food temperature, one can ensure a food product is kept at a proper temperature with the refrigeration monitoring system to tell whenever temperatures fall or rise outside of ideal temperatures. There are other types of sensor technology like handheld probes that can measure and track temperatures in real-time. 

• Tracking throughout Supply Chain

Maintaining temperature logs, running training, scheduling food safety audits, and managing foodborne illness complaints should all be housed in a single location that is seamlessly accessible for busy restaurant operators. As restaurant operations become complicated, a robust food safety management program will make it easier to organize and simplify all components of a food safety program and provide full control over all the several tasks and processes in the food supply chain.

• Employee Training

Numerous investigations into recalls of contaminated food pinpoint food handler misconduct or unsanitary work practices. Keeping the restaurant in top shape calls for a full team effort.  As technology continues to evolve, data will need to be consistently reiterated and offered to meet standards and regulations for monitoring, testing, record-keeping, and reporting. Training materials can be shared through an online portal or network so employees can easily access them anytime they need to.