How Sharpening Food Safety Practices with IoT Technology can Reduce Foodborne Illness
The method of using traditional manual oversight to enforce food safety policies is destined for the history books. Restaurant corporations, owners, franchisees, and general managers have long been enforcing food safety policies through the internal leadership structure. That approach is challenged, however, by high employee turnover rates, ineffective line-level supervisors, dry-labbing (employees plugging in fake results), rush times, and willful disobedience (employees that only comply if directly supervised). By implementing new technology, some restaurant leaders are taking the bull by the horns to keep a better eye on their food safety practices.
Advancements in Internet of Things (IoT) technology have become available that substantially improve food safety oversight, ultimately resulting in higher levels of compliance with more accurate and reliable results. The enhancement occurs because technology can watch over things that would be impossible to supervise otherwise. The technology essentially puts in place full-time and after-hours supervision over key food safety control points. To further exemplify this point, key case study findings are discussed in the areas of hygiene, dry-labbing, mistakes, and equipment failures.