External audits of food establishments can be a very stressful experience for owners and employees. The constant worry of receiving a notice for a health code violation – which can lead to a closure or a large fine – can hang over one’s head. A quick-fix solution to ease the stress is to self-audit through a self-auditing program. This will help your company evaluate and improve performance on a continuous basis. It will also provide your company with credibility, especially within the specific systems set in place.

Audit checklists are very important when it comes to establishing proper food safety, hygiene, housekeeping and maintenance standards. Not just thins keeps your staff informed about the important things that must be done on a regular basis, but also keeps your facility compliant with the food regulations of local authorities. They allow for easy and straightforward resolution of any food risks, allow optimal development, and result in being violation-proof.

But it’s important to pick the right type of self-auditing program or a software that matches your specific business needs and expectations. The self-auditing program should allow managers and employees to detect any cases of unsafe practices so they may be corrected before it becomes a large issue that is discovered by an inspector. These food risk issues need to be consistently monitored to ensure the safety of the business and customers. The program must include common areas of concern that inspectors will look out for, so you can stay a couple steps ahead.

To optimize development of the company, you will need to be able to fill in any gaps identified by the auditing program. This includes halting any procedures and measures that are not allowing the improvement of the company, as well as any procedures that are causing the safety and development to backtrack.

Keeping track of the internal audits would allow you to be violation-proof when health inspectors or corporate auditors come. This way, there are no surprises. Documentation of all the internal audits through photos and reports will provide you with evidence to share with the inspectors if needed.

Our company Probe It Food Safety, is developing a self-auditing program where we will provide restaurants the ability to perform and complete self-auditing through pre-made forms and checklists. The goal of this program is to help hotels, restaurants and other food units stay compliant with local regulations as well as ensure making a positive impact on the customers. We will provide corporate, self audits and daily checklists that are easy and thorough. Our corporate field audits will allow franchises to evaluate all their locations to remain under a consistent standard. The self audits will provide checklists to monitor between visits from the corporate auditors and allow them to prepare for their next visit. Finally, the daily checklists will allow monitoring of routine tasks, to ensure a consistent day to day structure and procedures.

Be sure to look out for our self-auditing program at Probe It Food Safety!