As snack and bakery producers develop more refrigerated and frozen foods, suppliers serving the industry are offering innovative ways to monitor the cold chain.
Sound sanitary facility design is vital in the snack and baking industry in order to maintain peak food safety, especially for facilities making products with tricky ingredients or processes from a sanitation perspective. Associated sanitation procedures can also prove a challenge in older facilities.
It's important to be able to trace the movements of a product or ingredient that requires refrigerated or frozen transport or storage throughout its life cycle, and this is where cold chain technology comes into play.
We recently were able to talk to Anthony Spinato, president of Spinato's Fine Foods, Tempe, AZ, about their new broccoli pizza crust and other frozen pizza aspects.
The grocery store that is constantly releasing innovative products, Trader Joe's, announced the winners of its 10th Annual Customer Choice Awards this month.
Controlling allergens is vital in snack and bakery facilities that seek to remain 100 percent allergen-free. The first step is to establish best practices, as well as regularly testing the production environment and finished products for presence of allergens.
ERP (enterprise resource planning) software can help snack and bakery businesses see the "big picture" while constantly improving. While many ERP software choices are available, they're constantly being improved and changing, too.
In snack and bakery production, the internet of things (IoT) is essential, it can streamline production via connected sensors or RFID, and then feed data back for analysis.