Safer food, better business (SFBB) adopts an innovative approach to food safety management, and has been designed to be practical and easy to use for small catering businesses, such as restaurants, cafes and takeaways. It has been developed by the Agency over a number of years, working in partnership with more than 50 local authorities and associated small caterers, experts and consultants. It has been written to be as simple and jargon-free as possible.
How does SFBB work?
The pack uses ‘safe methods’ fact sheets and a diary. The fact sheets describe the main food safety risks and how they can be managed. They are split into five sections: cross-contamination, cleaning, chilling, cooking and management. The safe methods fact sheets outline key safety points and explain their importance. They also provide businesses with the opportunity to write down how they do things, thus tailoring the pack to their individual ways of working. Pictures help to illustrate the safety points. The safe methods fact sheets also give practical tips on how to tackle problems and how to prevent them happening again. The diary includes week-to-view pages, checks to do every day when businesses open and close, a four-weekly review and other useful pages such as staff training records.
The ‘Safer food, better business’ approach is based partly on ‘reporting by exception’. Businesses only need to write things down if anything different happens, or if something goes wrong. Otherwise, the only daily record-keeping required is to sign the diary every day to say that the opening and closing checks have been done and safe methods followed. The pack uses a specially made two-in-one binder, which allows the safe methods fact sheets and diary to be kept in one place.