Capture and analyze temperature readings faster and more accurately with GoSpotCheck’s new Temperature Task and Bluetooth thermometer integration.
Holding food at the correct temperature is a key pillar of food safety--any variance can create risk for guests and the business as a whole. Johns Hopkins University analyzed the financial impact a single food-borne illness outbreak can have on restaurants by category type. In the study, depending on the severity of the outbreak, they estimated fast food restaurants may incur up to $1.9M in expense per incident, and for quick-serve brands, the total could exceed $2.1M.
What’s more, these figures don’t reflect the long-term impact chronic food safety incidents have on brand equity, consumer sentiment, or stock price. The federal Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was designed to build a culture of prevention for food-borne illness and outbreaks, which means brands need easy ways to train teams, uphold temp-taking protocol, and spotlight risk while there’s time to address it. At GoSpotCheck, we’re proud to introduce two major enhancements to help restaurant and food service teams do just that as they standardize, reward, and sustain a culture of world-class food safety:
New Temperature Task
We’ve launched a new task type in GoSpotCheck--the Temperature Task--to help customers numerically capture temperature readings in Fahrenheit or Celsius more efficiently. Joining 11 other task types, our Temperature Task can be paired with conditional follow-up tasks that define specific corrective actions to take when temperature readings are too high or too low. These capabilities put the power in the hands of your frontline team to spot and resolve temperature-based issues immediately, and keep guests safer (more on conditional task best practices HERE)
Bluetooth Thermometer IoT Sensor Integration
We’ve helped customers move from a world of hand-written, paper-based food temp logs with temperatures taken by hand, to one where teams capture temperature readings digitally on mobile. Now, we’ve taken things a step further, with our new Bluetooth thermometer integration which helps teams submit temperatures wirelessly in seconds via supported Bluetooth thermometers. Using the new Bluetooth Connection Manager within GoSpotCheck, frontline teams can pair select Bluetooth thermometers with the GoSpotCheck app to automatically transfer temperature readings from thermometers directly into GoSpotCheck mission responses. We designed this new integration to save teams time and ensure ultimate data accuracy.
Saving Time, The Smart Way
We know how important daily temperature checks are to ensuring guest health and safety in food services. Monitoring temperatures of food and equipment throughout the day is vital.
The labor spent capturing and documenting temperatures can really add up, especially for operations with multiple food prep stations and pieces of equipment. Using an integrated Bluetooth thermometer to wirelessly transfer readings directly to a GoSpotCheck mission response saves users 1-3 seconds on EACH temp reading taken. So if a checklist requires 25 individual temperature readings, Bluetooth wireless temp taking can save over one minute per mission, per person each shift. For a mission that used to take 10 minutes to complete, we’re seeing a 10% average time savings each time this checklist is completed with Bluetooth. Multiplied across the number of times this task is completed daily, the benefits start to compound, and free up time for food safety refreshers, production, and customer service.
Eliminating Errors, Everywhere
What do Yes/No, Count, Multiple Choice, and Photo Tasks have in common in the GoSpotCheck platform? Hint: the only tool required to complete each task is a person’s eyes. However, taking an accurate temperature reading requires an external tool, which adds a variable to the data capture process and can introduce friction and a margin for error. Before, manually logging a temperature reading from a thermometer in GoSpotCheck sometimes meant it was entered incorrectly--either intentionally (pencil-whipping) or unintentionally (fat-fingering). Using Bluetooth thermometers guarantees all temperatures captured in the field are accurate and not subject to human error.
Driving Corrective Action When it Counts
Our new Temperature Task supports conditional logic, which means you can define acceptable thresholds for each temperature reading and trigger a series of alerts and corrective actions in the field to address issues. Should a temperature reading fall outside of an acceptable threshold, teams can assign users a follow-up task to immediately resolve the issue as instructed (for example, guiding the user to throw away an item that’s too warm, alert their supervisor, or double check their data entry). Setting parameters for acceptable responses in GoSpotCheck eliminates the need for teams to memorize temperature rules for items or equipment, and reduces the risk that compromised food will be served to a guest. These additional safeguards work with your teams, not against them, and help when attrition is high, and training budgets are strained.
Accurate Historical Documentation Reduces Risk
Within GoSpotCheck’s Insights reporting dashboards, we’ve made it easy to identify which temperatures were captured via Bluetooth vs. those entered manually, so you can immediately understand the accuracy of the temperature readings you’re seeing, and quickly surface issues in data quality to your operators if there’s an issue.
And because temperature history is stored in digital format within GoSpotCheck automatically, you can analyze temperature trends over time. These analyses can be incredibly useful in highlighting location and equipment performance patterns before they create risk and expense.
Available Now
GoSpotCheck’s new Bluetooth thermometer integration and Temperature Task are available now with your GoSpotCheck license. We’re excited to hear how you and your team put these enhancements to work in your business!
NOTE: GoSpotCheck’s Bluetooth thermometer integration is BYOT (Bring Your Own Thermometer). Please check here for a list of supported Bluetooth devices.
