Food Safety for Worcester College, Oxford
The need – food safety assurance without wasting staff time
Food safety is of utmost importance to the catering team at Worcester College who serve in excess of 1000 meals a day to students and visitors. Food safety monitoring centres on a Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points (HACCP) plan, the system that forms the basis of global food standards. Traditionally paper-based temperature records are used as part of a HACCP system, but these require daily, time-consuming, manual checks and the completion of labour-intensive forms. The need was to free up staff time that could be better spent on food preparation while continually monitoring food safety.
The solution – a Monika system meets HACCP requirements
Monika’s food safety monitoring system simplifies the components of a HACCP plan, so catering staff can meet their food safety obligations more easily and efficiently. For optimum performance in harsh kitchen environments Monika’s system uses robust, self-healing, ZigBee wireless connections. These reliably transmit real-time data from various locations around the kitchen to a central server. This provides staff with up-to-the-minute records of temperature and other critical information so they can identify potential problems and act quickly to instigate corrective actions and save stock if needed.
‘The Monika system freed up chefs in my kitchen, allowing them more time to concentrate on food preparation. We use the technology to monitor our large, walk-in, units as well as our smaller appliances in the main kitchen and four satellite kitchens. Recorded on my computer, the system allows me to view detailed reports when I require or when I am asked to demonstrate compliance.”
The outcome – a streamlined catering department
Head Chef Robert Dennis turned to Monika to streamline his catering department, commenting: ‘The Monika system freed up chefs in my kitchen, allowing them more time to concentrate on food preparation. We use the technology to monitor our large, walk-in, units as well as our smaller appliances in the main kitchen and four satellite kitchens. Recorded on my computer, the system allows me to view detailed reports when I require or when I am asked to demonstrate compliance.”