The binder on the office shelf
There is a binder labelled food safety. Inside are goods in forms for green deliveries, a cleaning schedule, pest control visit notes, a temperature log for the fridge that holds milk for the training bar, and a sheet for flavoured coffee allergen cleaning. Some sheets are complete. Some were filled in all at once on Friday afternoon. A larger buyer has asked to see your records before listing your coffee, and you are not keen to hand them the binder.
Paper forms depend on memory
Your food safety plan is presumably sound. The weakness is in the recording. Paper forms depend on someone remembering to fill them in at the right moment, and there is nothing to tell you that a check was missed until you look at the binder.
The roastery day does not help. The person roasting is watching the development time, the person packing is racing the courier collection, and a form in the office is the last thing on anyone's mind. The paper is not wrong. It is simply in the wrong place at the wrong moment.
- Checks are filled in after the fact, from memory.
- Missed checks are only noticed at review time.
- Goods in records are not linked to the green lot they describe.
- Corrective actions are written in margins and not followed up.
- Showing records to a buyer means photocopying the binder.
Why the paperwork matters
Records are how you show that the plan you wrote is the plan you follow. Wholesale buyers, retailers who stock your bags and inspectors all tend to ask. Incomplete paper records make an otherwise careful roastery look careless. They also cost time: the end of week catch up, the search for a missing sheet, the reformatting of records for a buyer's questionnaire. What your plan must contain, and what regulators expect, are for you and your adviser to decide.
Digital checklists built from your plan
- We turn each check in your existing food safety plan into a digital checklist, with the questions, acceptable answers and the corrective action you have already defined.
- Checks are prompted on a tablet or phone at the right time: goods in when a green delivery is booked, cleaning at the end of each roast day, flavoured coffee cleaning after a flavoured batch.
- Goods in checks attach to the green lot record, so the delivery, its check and the coffee that came from it are linked.
- When an answer is outside your limits, the corrective action is shown and a follow up is created, which stays open until someone closes it.
- Missed checks are flagged the same day to the person responsible, not discovered at the end of the month.
- Records can be filtered and exported for a buyer or auditor, showing exactly what you choose to share.
| Record | Triggered by | Linked to |
|---|---|---|
| Goods in | Green delivery booked | Green lot |
| Daily cleaning | End of roast day | Roast day |
| Allergen or flavour clean | Flavoured batch logged | Batch |
| Pest control | Contractor visit | Visit report |
| Corrective action | Out of limit answer | Original check |
How the records feel afterwards
Checks are done when they should be, because they are prompted and quick. The owner sees at a glance whether today's checks are complete. Corrective actions are closed rather than forgotten. When a buyer asks for evidence, you send an export that looks as organised as your roastery actually is.
Is the binder your food safety system?
- Food safety records are paper forms in a binder.
- Checks are sometimes filled in afterwards.
- Goods in records are not linked to green lots.
- A buyer has asked for records and it was awkward to provide them.
- Corrective actions are not followed up in writing.