Take your checklists digital

​Take your checklists digital

When it comes to boosting your food safety record, technology might be your restaurant’s greatest ally. Consider the checklists you need to monitor and update, whether for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points compliance to employee training. As Food Safety Magazine reports, having the right digital platform to manage all of your restaurant’s checklists has wide-ranging benefits, allowing you to access multiple sources of information from one location, improving your efficiency and managerial control, and reducing fraud and waste. Of course, there are many options to choose from, but the best ones will let you log time and temperature data, maintain warming and cooling logs, integrate operational checklists on a single interface, conduct an audit, monitor your cleaning compliance, identify potential fraud, and enable you to use checklists as training tools. Make sure the app is easy to navigate and that it has features to help you detect and resolve problems, such as a dish lingering in the temperature danger zone for too long (a problem that brought Chipotle back into the news in recent weeks) or a checklist being completed in a questionable way (a digital checklist can hold employees accountable in ways a paper checklist cannot). It should also allow you to access data and reports remotely and notify you with a real-time alert if and when something goes wrong.

​Sweet on sugar?

If your menu includes a lot of added sugar, take note: New research from KerryDigest found that consumers are worried about the levels of sugar, above other ingredients, in food and drinks. One-third of Americans connect sugar with weight gain, 71 percent scan ingredient labels for added sugar and 46 percent want to cut back on their consumption of sugar. Reducing the added sugar in your dishes – and promoting your efforts to guests – can go a long way in showing you’re conscious about health. If you need some sweetness but want to avoid adding artificial sweeteners or sugar per se, the research found that consumers responded best to natural sweeteners like stevia, honey, monk fruit and maple syrup.