- Free Version: Available for teams of up to 10
- Pricing: Premium plan $24/month (with free 30-day trial period)
- Platforms supported: Available on mobile app (iOS and Android) or a web-based software
Why use SafetyCulture?
SafetyCulture is a free-to-download food safety software solution that helps eliminate paper-driven audit processes and modernize the food safety compliance program. All you need is a mobile device, and you can capture critical food safety information, even on sites where there’s no internet connection. Build digital checklists that allow your auditors to produce comprehensive reports—complete with photo/video evidence, notes, and corrective action details.
With SafetyCulture, your audits and inspections will be immediately saved in the cloud for reference of authorized personnel. Food manufacturers, suppliers, and service firms can easily access old audits and present them to HACCP or FSSC 22000 auditors with ease. SafetyCulture also allows for temperature sensors to be integrated into its system, helping track the travel of food products in the cold chain process with its readings going straight to the app even from afar for easy access and reading
Features:
- Use premade templates from the Public Library and edit as needed
- Capture photos and videos using your device’s camera and quickly attach them to an inspection
- Fill-out food safety checklists’ text fields with a built-in barcode scanner
- Attach reference information to help guide users in completing fields
- Sign off food safety audits to ensure food quality or the sufficiency of the food supply with a digital signature and ensure accountability
- Reinforce the integrity of inspections by automatically capturing the exact time of inspections with SafetyCulture’s time-stamp function
- Integrate wireless weather and temperature sensors in use to SafetyCulture’s checklists to help monitor food in transit or storage
- Provide necessary training in the same platform you do your inspections
- Generate analytical reports of your food supply and safety history to view your data at a glance
Why use Foodkeeper App?
The Foodkeeper App is a free food safety management software developed by the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service, Cornell University, and the Food Marketing Institute to promote better food waste management and food keeping and safety practices in the US. This app aims to help homemakers and food inventory managers by offering storage advice for different food and drink items, cooking tips, and a tracking system to remember expiry dates.
Features:
- Search the app through swipe gestures or voice
- Cooking tips for poultry, seafood, and meat
- Virtual assistance through the app through its visual representative, “Ask Karen”
- Free Version: Available
- Pricing: This app is free for use and has no paid version
- Platforms supported: Available on Android and IOS
Why use Safefood 360°?
Safefood 360° is one of the food safety software solutions that focuses more on ensuring compliance and management. With Safefood 360°, users can monitor every aspect of their food production processes, from dealing with their suppliers to the quality of their food inventories, and their pest control schedules. This food safety app can also help with ensuring compliance with different food safety standards, such as HACCP, and maintaining a Preventive Control Plan (PCP).
Features:
- Dedicated features for keeping track of approved suppliers and the overall supply chain process
- Built-in modules for food safety standard compliance
- Customizable alerts for instances of nonconformance
- Free Version: Contact Safefood 360° for more info
- Pricing: Contact Safefood 360° for more info
- Platforms supported: Available on Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chromebook
Why use Leafe?
Leafe is a food hygiene app focused on promoting good hygiene and safety in the kitchen. With Leafe, kitchen managers can onboard new staff through the app and orient them on going paperless by using Leafe’s digital checklists and documents on maintaining good hygiene, the proper hygiene practices, and standards to adhere to, and how to do it.
Features:
- Dedicated features to help record and manage temperatures of food and refrigerators
- Built-in food inventory tool
- Guides on how to stay compliant with HACCP and local government regulations
- Professional help for implementing food safety and hygiene practices
- Available on Android and iOS
- Free Version: Not available
- Pricing: Paid plans start at £10 per venue per month
- Platforms supported: Contact Leafe for more info
Why use Smart Foodstuff?
Smart Foodstuff is a home-centered food safety app for helping homemakers manage their food inventory with their smart food containers. Their food containers have built-in sensors in them to ensure only fresh food is cooked and consumed, with their data available in graphs.
Features:
- Containers can sense if the Viable But Not Culturable (VBNC) bacterium pathogens in the food inside it have become dangerous
- Data from the container shows the overall nutritional value of food inside
- Wireless containers
- Free Version: Contact Smart Foodstuff for more info
- Pricing: Starts at $14.99 per month
- Platforms supported: Contact Smart Foodstuff for more info
Why use Controlant?
Controlant is a cold chain solution software that also works as a food safety app. Controlant strives to prevent food from going bad by using automation to monitor and control its temperature and conditions as it is transported.
Features:
- Useable for air, sea, and land transportation
- Can also help in identifying sources of waste and helping reduce them and carbon footprint
- Cloud-based and can track data in real-time on mobile and web
- Free Version: Contact Controlant for more info
- Pricing: Contact Controlant for more info
- Platforms supported: Contact Controlant for more info
Why use Chomp?
Chomp is a food safety app designed for chefs. With Chomp, chefs can log important data related to their work with the app’s dedicated sections to recording refrigerator temperatures, cleaning and maintenance schedules, pest control, and receiving goods for inventory management. Chomp also has a live audit reporting feature that can be shared with other team members.
Features:
- Changes in audits reflect real-time
- Food safety modules included with the app
- Staff management and training tracker are also available
- Free Version: Not available
- Pricing: Starts at $75 per month
- Platforms supported: Available on Web
Why use RiskLimiter?
The RiskLimiter Inspector Suite is a food safety app that also works as a risk management service. While RiskLimiter primarily works as a food safety audit software by tracking food temperature and conditions, it also records slips, trips, falls, and other accidents and hygiene practices.
Features:
- Supports third-party temperature sensors
- Own company sensors can record temperatures at any interval
- Allows for voice data entry and photo attachments in incident reports
- Cloud-based
- Free Version: Contact RiskLimiter for more info
- Pricing: Contact RiskLimiter for more info
- Platforms supported: Available on Android and IOS devices
Why use ELPRO?
ELPRO is a cold chain, room, and equipment monitoring software that offers many solutions to different monitoring needs in the food and healthcare industries. As a food safety app, ELPRO offers temperature and humidity monitoring data loggers to keep track of the temperature and humidity of food products in transit and ensure they are kept within the standards safe for human consumption.
Features:
- Real-time data loggers available
- Mobile support available, depending on the data logger
- Data loggers compliant with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards
- Free Version: Contact ELPRO for more info
- Pricing: Contact ELPRO for more info
- Platforms supported: Contact ELPRO for more info
What is a Food Safety App?
A food safety app is a digital tool that provides you with a powerful mobile solution that gives an overview of your food safety measures and ensures that actions are well documented. It can be used by both professionals and homemakers to help assure the safety of their food, kitchen, and cooking. Also known as a food safety software or food safety audit software, a food safety app can come in different forms that target different needs. Many of the world’s leading food chain operators conduct regular and stringent food safety audits to strengthen their compliance with regulations and international food safety standards such as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), ISO 22000, Food Safety Systems Certification (FSSC) 22000, and the Food Safety Monitoring Act (FSMA).
Food Safety Apps for Housekeeping
Housekeeping can be done on either a homemaking and corporate or business level, but for both kinds, food safety is something to always be considered. For housekeeping in hotels and other hospitality establishments, food safety is essential in ensuring all food prepared and served meet both internal and local health standards. This includes food storage and inventory management, temperature, preparation, and serving. A food safety app can assist managers and chefs by helping them track all these details down and refer to them later as they go along with their daily tasks.
A food safety app can also be of great help to homemakers for almost the same reasons. Studies show that at home, food safety is not often given importance—when it should always be considered when managing one’s home. Food safety mismanagement can lead to food spoilage and improper cooking practices, which also leads to multiple illnesses throughout the year. Using a food safety app can then help mitigate or lessen this risk by tracking and recording the ingredients used for a meal, the shelf lives of food products, the nutritional details of ingredients and meals in storage, and the temperature they are stored at. In some cases, a food safety app can also contain reminders and details on proper food storage and preparation, which can be helpful. This way, homemakers can save time on food storage and preparation, allotting more time for other housekeeping tasks.
Food Safety Apps to Help Modernize Compliance
Another good way to use food safety apps is to help with compliance. With a food safety app, you can say goodbye to the old days of diving through piles of paperwork when presenting documentation evidence to food safety auditors. To ensure that food is safe, hygienic, and of adequate quality, many of the world’s leading food chain operators and industries strive to earn food safety certifications (e.g. HACCP, ISO 22000, FSSC 22000, GMP, FSMA, BRC, and SQF) through regular, stringent third-party food certification audits. Regular audits ensure an organization’s compliance with international food standards and regulations.
For consumers, food safety certificates prove that businesses adhere to the laws and best practices that protect them from food-borne illnesses and other adverse health effects. For businesses, on the other hand, certifications protect them from potential financial losses, lawsuits, and closure.
Internal food safety audit programs help food manufacturers, suppliers, and service firms prepare the necessary documentation evidence for certification audits; however, many audit programs are still paper-driven. This method makes it arduous for food safety auditors and businesses for a number of reasons, namely:
- It takes longer to generate reports.
- It provides little insight into areas of improvement.
- It leads to tons of paperwork and potential storage issues.
- It prevents actionable data from being analyzed immediately.
With a food safety app and a food safety compliance software, businesses can do away with paper checklists and modernize their compliance programs. A food safety app can be the “sixth sense” that empowers safety inspectors to monitor, predict, and analyze what’s happening in their operations with a system that makes internal compliance functions more efficient, sustainable, and productive.
Roselin Manawis