How one chef avoided a major loss of perishable stock
Whilst in COVID lockdown, Executive Chef Jamie Jack managed to save nearly $30,000 worth of frozen food after his freezer compressors failed.
When Executive Chef at Heriot Watt University, Jamie Jack, was off site due to COVID-19 lockdown, a major malfunction occurred with his catering store walk-in freezer.
Holding nearly $30,000 worth of perishable food, the freezer’s two compressors failed. With no staff on site, the issue could have gone completely unnoticed - and all stock would have perished.
But thankfully, Jamie had been using a digital food safety system to automatically monitor the temperature of his food during storage.
The system notified Jamie via SMS that there was an issue with this particular freezer. Working remotely, he arranged for engineers to attend, where they found one compressor had a gas leak and the other had tripped due to increased demand as a result of the leak.
“The two faults were quickly rectified, saving us not only the headache of having to empty such a large freezer but also somewhere in the region of £15,000GBP [$30,000AUD] worth of stock…Having the Monika system has certainly paid for itself over and over again throughout the years!”
Heriot Watt University in the UK has been using Monika for more than twenty years, and recently upgraded to its enterprise digital food safety system, MonikaPrime.
Live temperature monitoring is critical to avoiding food wastage and food-borne illness. MonikaPrime gives executive chefs like Jamie real-time visibility of all refrigerated units across their foodservice operation from any device.
With a manual temperature recording system, staff must visit various equipment and manually note their temperatures 2-3 times a day. This is time-consuming and prone to error - or worse, falsification. Not to mention difficult in the current pandemic, when staff movement and contact with surfaces needs to be reduced.
MonikaPrime monitors temperatures continuously by collecting data from sensors installed among the food within a cabinet. The sensors simulate the temperature of the food and trigger alarms when this moves out of safe range. Alerts can be received remotely, 24/7, and escalated to management when required.
Working to an average foodservice business’ opening hours, it’s possible your refrigerated appliances run for over 40 per cent of the year unsupervised. Monika can help you manage this risk. For a free demonstration, contact Monika’s National Sales Manager, William Gatzonis, on 0497 999 889 or via wgatzonis@monika.com.au
Find out more about MonikaPrime
6th October 2020
