How to manage change when evolving to a digital Food Control Plan
It’s possible you’ve been hearing a lot about digital Food Control Plans lately. While they’re a new technology solution to food safety management and compliance, a digital Food Control Plan (FCP) like Chomp is actually based on and aligned with Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) guidelines and regulations.
It’s also likely you’ve got a few questions about shifting from your old paper system. What if it doesn’t fit your needs? And anyway, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Especially when fixing it could cause downtime, confusion, or the loss of files.
The good (news). Switching your FCP from one system to another doesn’t have to cause you nightmares or sap your time (and strength).
The bad. On the other hand, a paper system is taking up your teams valuable time, looking through files to see what needs to be actioned, meaning things can get missed or mis-recorded.
The ugly (truth). Last but not least, as New Zealand food safety legislation and regulation gets more stringent and complex, using a static paper system could leave your business exposed to the risks of non-compliance.
For peace of mind, your FCP needs to feel like it’s working hard for you, rather than the other way around.
Small change? Big difference!
The time and investment needed to change to a digital FCP like Chomp is small potatoes compared with the wasted staff hours and risks of an unwieldy paper system. Chomp works on any tablet and takes just 3 steps to install and setup.
- Send Chomp your plan
- Load in your existing FCP details (Chomp can do this for you)
- Login to your App
… and Bob’s your uncle.
To keep you current with New Zealand food safety management legislation, Chomp updates itself automatically. You don’t need to spend hours training the team to use the new system either. Chomp's simple to use, touch screen technology is intuitive and very easy to navigate. The Chomp training portal is another feature to make your plan hum. Staff get to train themselves on their own devices or in house, through Chomp’s online training tool. Results are recorded for each team member, and easily viewed and verified by managers and auditors. So your whole team is on point when it comes to preparing and serving food safely.
Once you’re all set up, all your data is accessible online anytime from the Chomp dashboard on your laptop or PC. Chomp know's how scratchy wifi can be in kitchens, so Chomp is designed to work offline and data uploads when wifi is reconnected. Your Head Chef or your manager can see everything as it happens. And every detail will be securely stored in the cloud for the four years required by the 2014 Food Act, no more filing boxes, glogging your office.
Why go from dodo to digi?
The creaky old paper FCP is destined to become as extinct as the dodo. By adapting your commercial kitchen and evolving your system to a digital FCP, you can get ahead of the game now – so you’re looking after your reputation, your staff, and your customers.
“It’s reduced our workload and improved our efficiency, it’s user friendly and requires almost no training for our new staff to use in comparison to the paperwork which less experienced staff would lack confidence using. This means that more data that is required to be recorded is being recorded, and on a timely basis.”
Ben Kellett, Head Chef – Winnie’s Gourmet Pizza Bar, Queenstown