Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment

Think about the last time you attended a large event — whether it was a basketball game, hockey game, or a concert. The entertainment might’ve been the main attraction, but the food was a key part of your experience.

You probably haven’t thought twice about what it takes to enjoy a hot dog or delicious snack when you’re busy watching the arena. The culinary teams at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) plan, coordinate and work hard to ensure it’s available, appetizing, and, most importantly, safe — with the help of SafetyCulture.

MLSE is one of North America’s premier sports and entertainment organizations. It owns numerous sports teams, internal and external restaurants, and Scotiabank Arena. MLSE also invests in and operates five of Toronto’s sports facilities.

Delivering high-quality sports, entertainment, and food experiences

When it comes to food and concessions at their facilities, MLSE doesn’t use a third-party caterer. They’re one of very few “self-operating” in the industry. “Here, the emphasis has always been on quality,” explains Chris Zielinski, Senior Culinary Director at MLSE. Keeping operations in-house allows more control over the quality standard and the customer experience across the company’s stadiums and restaurants.

Maintaining quality across numerous venues takes a large team, and MLSE has roughly 70 food and beverage managers and 1,400 staff members involved. “It’s a big group,” he says. “We need everybody to have their eyes on quality and safety. That’s where SafetyCulture comes in.”

Struggling with siloed communication, missing specifics, and sprawling reports

MLSE, like many companies, was relying on inefficient paper processes—especially for inspections. To help upgrade their ways of working, Chris brought in Mike Byerley, a Food Safety and Occupational Health & Safety consultant with over 20 years of experience.

Mike works closely with MLSE to review their food service operations and conduct on-site training sessions. Before he came on board,  there was a lot of reporting work but it lacked the detail they needed to take specific actions on important food health and safety measures. “Someone would just walk around and take notes,” Mike explains. “Then, they would send a 100-page report to only two people.”

For example, a report might say a cutting board was stored improperly. “But in the old version, information about which cutting boards were where got lost,” Chris explains, and having reliable records on chopping board cleanliness and whereabouts is crucial for food health and safety for the thousands of guests they serve. 

That was when Mike suggested SafetyCulture. “It was very easy to read, very easy to comprehend, and very easy to reply,” Chris recalls about seeing SafetyCulture for the first time. “Plus, it had great communication tools.”

MLSE has used SafetyCulture for the past six years to ensure food safety across all food and concession operations. While it’s used most frequently by senior managers who are responsible for relaying information to their teams and frontline workers, Chris says SafetyCulture has helped improve communication through all of the layers of the business. “Having everybody be able to connect and see information in real-time was something we’d never had before. With over 1,400 food and beverage staff, you’ve got a lot of people who are potentially touching things and getting involved,” he says. “It’s up to us to make sure they manage their part of the business safely.” 

Building better, stronger, and safer operations with SafetyCulture

“In general, I find that the staff have embraced the tool,” Chris shares. “It’s helping them take food safety more seriously. But it’s also made us stronger as a food and beverage operation.” Today, MLSE uses SafetyCulture in several meaningful ways.

Less guesswork and more targeted actions

After Mike completes an audit or inspection (Mike and MLSE call these “reviews” internally), his comments, pictures, and action plans are all put into SafetyCulture. “Every single supervisor or manager of all of the operations has access to SafetyCulture, so they can go in and see the results themselves,” Mike says.

While the information is now more accessible, it’s also more actionable. If a cutting board is stored improperly, there’s no more guessing and finger-pointing—there’s detailed information and photos to document the safety issue.

That helped the entire team quickly see the value of the platform. “When they saw that information was coming that they could take action on — and it wasn’t just somebody writing up a 100-page report they wouldn’t see — it really made life a lot easier for them,” Mike explains. 

Consistent temperature monitoring to reduce product waste

More recently, MLSE also implemented SafetyCulture’s sensors to monitor the temperatures of all their key refrigerators, as food needs to be kept at specific temperatures to comply with standards and avoid health risks.

Chris says the company previously used sensors from a different company, but they weren’t able to customize the alarm settings for certain circumstances — like when they knew the fridge would be opening or closing frequently during halftime on game days.

“It would issue alarms at such a regular rate that people were just not looking at it anymore,” Chris says, noting that the alarms became more background noise than a cause for immediate action.

With SafetyCulture, MLSE can customise the temperature alarms so that they can work through busy periods or times for fridge loading without disruptions. “It’s allowed us to have a trustworthy number of alarms so we know when we do get an alarm, it’s probably meaningful,” Chris says.

Across its sites, MLSE has hundreds of fridges and freezers that store the $30 million worth of stock it buys in a year. One protein refrigerator can hold $60,000 worth of stock at a time. Having that level of control and monitoring is crucial for catching issues early and limiting product waste.

“I think about the price of the system and I know we are getting our money back,” Chris says about how he quickly saw a return on investment with SafetyCulture’s Sensors. “I had several fridges go down the last year. With no system at all, I probably would have thrown out $20,000 to $30,000 worth of stock. Using Sensors, we’ve reduced our stock loss to just $1,000.”

Traceable records = a positive reputation

Compliance with food regulators is a big part of Chris and Mike’s day-to-day. They work closely with Toronto Public Health to ensure that all of the company’s food and beverage operations are up to standards.

But they know that reliable health and safety is about so much more than satisfying regulations. It’s also about MLSE’s reputation. Ultimately, if someone believes the food made them ill, it doesn’t necessarily only reflect on the caterer and concessions — their brand reputation is also at stake. 

SafetyCulture has been instrumental in avoiding health and safety issues in the first place and equipping the company with a detailed record and history it can turn to if a problem does surface.

One time, a customer complained to Toronto Public Health that the food at one of MLSE’s venues made him sick. Using SafetyCulture, they can follow it back. “We knew the food came from a trusted source, we knew how all the products were shipped. We have a process for internal movement and of course we have a history of all the people who had eaten it. With SafetyCulture, we have the history of the fridge temperatures and our food safety logs in a centralized place.” Chris explains.

“Then, when public health shows up, we can say, ‘Here’s what we’ve got. This is the history. It’s unlikely that this adds up to one person getting sick,” he continues, “Toronto Public Health loves that we have that traceability and that we can follow the crumbs all the way through. It gives us all peace of mind,” says Chris.

Looking ahead: More scores with SafetyCulture

As they look to the future, Chris and Mike see more opportunities for MLSE to leverage SafetyCulture across the business. 

They plan to move more information, such as their Toronto Public Health records, into the platform so managers can access it when necessary.

Additionally, MLSE is looking to expand the company’s use of SafetyCulture outside of just food service to include more facility operations. Mike mentions that people often bring up issues unrelated to food safety when he goes in for inspections and reviews. “I think places like Issues and Heads Up are good places to start to go into the system, mark those down, and take them out of the food safety realm,” Mike says. 

Ultimately, MLSE has seen the value SafetyCulture offers for streamlining operations, improving safety, and improving collaboration, so they know finding other uses across the business is the ultimate power play. As Chris concludes, “There’s just so many different things that we can look at using it for.”