Food Retail Shop – Small

HACCP Legislative Requirements

All sizes of food retailers must comply with Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) standards, see the Food Standards Agency website for more information. HACCP temperature monitoring systems offer a simple solution to help remain compliant.

Ensuring temperature sensitive foods are held and displayed at the correct temperatures is a key part of a HACCP action plan.

Maintaining the cold chain

Having checks to monitor temperature is simple in principle, however issues often arise in ensuring these checks are carried out regularly and that results are clearly documented.

Actions taken and issues found must be clearly recorded. This means staff must know what the maximum and minimum temperatures should be, and what to do if these temperatures are exceeded.

Staff often don’t know how to take & record temperatures correctly, training should be given and the training session recorded.

Common manual temperature recording mistakes/issues

We see a number of common mistakes with manual temperature recording, these include:

• Reading temperatures off the units display – The temperature reading on the units display is often not the actual temperature inside, but commonly it’s a calculated temperature or it may be the air-on/off probe temperature. Independent readings should be taken to get the actual temperature.
• Not allowing the handheld thermometer to settle to temperature – The handheld thermometer probe must be left in the unit for a time period (at least 5-10 minutes) to reach the units temperature before taking a reading. Often this is not done.
• Reading are taken at random times – readings are taken when staff remember and not at set times, meaning readings aren’t taken at regular intervals making trend analysis impossible.
• Readings get forgotten – blanks are seen on temperature logs as staff find themselves busy and forget to take readings. Worse still, staff make up log readings to hide the fact they’d forgotten.

Constant temperature monitoring with loggers and chart recorders

A number of constant logger and chart recording solutions are available. These remove issues that arise from manual temperature readings as they are automatically recorded.

Loggers and chart recorders give historic data which require downloading or chart paper changing. These systems rely heavily on staff interaction which can cause issues in-itself.

As only historic data tends to be available these systems show what has happened not what is currently happening.

Tek Troniks constant wireless monitoring solution

Our wireless solutions for the food and retail sector offer the benefits of constant logger/chart recorders with the added benefits of:

• Not requiring staff involvement to get, download or store data
• Alarms based on real time readings
• Allowing action notes to be added to alarms events
• Access to compliant reports and graphs

Temperature sensors talk with our base station which automatically logs data. When readings fall outside of set points the base station will automatically alarm.

On alarm, the base station can make an audible noise alerting staff of an issue. It can email and be set up to use SMS or phone calls to notify of problems, this means a reduced risk of expensive stock loss.

The reporting and graphing tools lets HACCP compliant reports be produced to support HACCP standards. Depending on the model used, data can be stored on-board for up to 10 years.

Typical system in small retail food business

As per the diagram above the typical system in small retail food business consists of; a D3 LITE base station and 2-4 temperature sensors.

The D3 LITE is designed for small user applications and offers the advanced features of more complex systems at a fraction of the cost.

The find out more about the D3 LITE download our product brochure or contact our team for a system quote.