Grocery stores offer a wide variety of foods, including many perishables that require tight temperature controls. Fridges, freezers, reach-ins, and bunkers that hold these sensitive foods must be checked throughout the day, taking time away from team members from ensuring good experience for their customers. Manual temperature checks, typically done with pen and paper, are error-prone, easily forgotten, increase...

Written by SmartSense | December 10, 2019 | Food Safety, HACCP

In just the last couple of months, we’ve been reading reports about one new food recall after another: Listeria in smoked salmon, E.coli in ground beef, and undeclared allergens in P.F. Chang’s frozen entrees – and that’s not an exhaustive list. These ongoing incidents have once more raised the question among health experts of just how safe our food is since passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in...

Written by SmartSense | December 5, 2019 | Food Safety, Supply Chain

During the holiday season, Americans throw out 25% more trash than the rest of the year. As you can imagine, Thanksgiving is the holiday triggering the highest percentage of food as part of this waste. If this year mirrors past statistics, we will collectively discard 35% – or 204 million pounds – of edible turkey meat. More than 150 million pounds of potatoes, green beans and other vegetable sides will find their...

Written by SmartSense | November 27, 2019 | Food Safety, Supply Chain

In our previous post about inventory management during Thanksgiving, we touched on the importance of turkey as the key food product most in need of careful advance planning to optimize stock. In this post, we’re taking a deeper dive into the safety issues turkey raises along the cold chain.

Written by SmartSense | November 14, 2019 | Food Safety, HACCP, FSMA, Supply Chain

Recently, hundreds of pounds of salad from Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and Walmart were recalled due to concerns about salmonella and listeria contamination. The food supplier was a California-based company that was responsible for recalling some 2,811 pounds of ready-to-eat salads.

Written by SmartSense | October 31, 2019 | Food Safety, FSMA, Supply Chain

Earlier this year, Seattle resident Nathan Gregg made a disconcerting discovery at the downtown municipal dump: a pile of Amazon Go packaged meals stacked nearly 6 feet high. Gregg took photos that clearly show salads, wraps, and sandwiches in their original sealed plastic containers alongside other packaged food products.

Written by SmartSense | October 23, 2019 | Food Safety