The pandemic has shifted the discussion about food safety to focus on the overall safety of the full-service restaurant environment, in addition to the food they serve. Driving this shift are new consumer demands for total transparency. Full-service restaurants have an urgent need to assure guests that if they are open, then it is safe for guests to come in and enjoy a meal.
The challenge: How can restaurants back their brand promise of total safety when they are tasked to do more and be more for their guests? This challenge becomes more difficult when full-service restaurants are operating with fewer staff and less financial resources.
In the past, a simple sign in the window might have said it all: WE’RE OPEN, offered an implied promise of safety. However, today—amid the ongoing COVID crisis—consumers are demanding more transparency about what they are eating and where. The burden of proof lies solely with the operator and the solution lies with technology.
Addressing Food Safety Challenges
The ability for full-service restaurants to track inventory, keep food safe and address consumer demands for food provenance are essential during the pandemic. Restaurants need solutions that are adaptable and resilient.
Automation helps protect the restaurant by providing data that can be used to promote:
- Traceability and transparency for quick, accurate food recalls
- Food safety by providing correct expiration and use-by information and facilitating proper food rotation
- Processes that provide oversight and accountability for non-food prep tasks
- Enhanced consumer experience by providing providence information to reinforce consumers’ positive attitudes toward the food they’re consuming
Supply Chain Traceability—RFID
Achieving automation with an RFID solution provides end-to-end transparency and offers operators the opportunity to verify the food was handled safely throughout the supply chain. Restaurants tasked to monitor a whole new level of safety require new processes. RFID tagging solutions can give individual items unique digital identities enabling verifiable chain-of-custody data to be captured throughout the supply chain.
Full-service operators are well aware that there’s great urgency when there is a food recall. Deploying RFID and barcode labels allows recalled products to be located in seconds, quickly identifying the source of outbreaks and pulling them out of the food supply before they cause widespread illness. Applying RFID downstream in the supply chain help maintain traceability and transparency for these important back-of-house processes:
- Delivery accuracy
- Receiving
- Inventory cycle count
- Replenishment
- Expiration management
Hand Hygiene
Restaurants are striving to keep their employees and customers safe. However, many do not have an effective way to quantify or track that their employees are cleaning their hands thoroughly or frequently enough.
The status quo for hand hygiene—posted signage at sinks, hand sanitizer, and gloves—can provide a false sense of security and potentially make matters worse when it comes to stopping the spread of foodborne illnesses like: Norovirus, Salmonella, E.coli, Hepatitis A, and Listeria.
Enforcing hygiene rules in the new crisis environment requires additional technology-based protocols that help prevent COVID-19 spread as well as foodborne illnesses.
For example, technology can help monitor employee handwashing, helping managers avoid having uncomfortable conversations with employees who don’t wash their hands well enough, or at all. The CDC suggests that hands be washed with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.
The latest hand scanning technology can identify viruses and bacteria which informs associates that they must re-wash their hands before the dangerous microbes are transferred from their hands to the food they are handling. Data captured can be integrated into the RFID solution.
Temperature Tracking
On average, kitchens experience refrigerator failures at least twice a year. With typical refrigeration inventory averaging over $10,000, these failures can result in significant food waste and lost revenue. Food safety can be compromised, jeopardizing both customer safety and brand loyalty. Automated temperature monitoring systems let kitchen managers know the minute their refrigeration units are out of range.
Task Tracking
Checklists are a part of every successful kitchen manager’s toolkit. They give supervisors a quick, at-a-glance snapshot into the completion of critical daily tasks and serve as a roadmap for expectations for employees. But paper checklists are notoriously unreliable when it comes to tracking task completion accuracy or employee productivity. A digital task tracking solution takes the guesswork out of task completion compliance.
The most important thing for full-service restaurants in a post-pandemic world is to not get stuck in pre-pandemic paradigms. Technology to maintain food safety and sanitized premises that assure guests that you’ve opened safely will be the path forward to continued success.
Ryan Yost is vice president/general manager for the Printer Solutions Division (PSD) for Avery Dennison Corporation. In his role, he is responsible for worldwide leadership of and strategy for the Printer Solutions Division, focused on building partnerships and solutions within the Food, Apparel and Fulfillment industries. For more information, visit https://printers.averydennison.com/en/home.html.
Ryan Yost is vice president/general manager for the Printer Solutions Division (PSD) for Avery Dennison Corporation. In his role, he is responsible for worldwide leadership of and strategy for the Printer Solutions Division, focused on building partnerships and solutions within the Food, Apparel and Fulfillment industries. For more information, visit https://printers.averydennison.com/en/home.html.
