How a major bakery brand perpetuates its 130-site brand

Guaranteeing food quality and safety

With their activities and number of sites constantly evolving, major retailers are seeking to optimize the resources needed to ensure the long-term future of their brands. Driven in particular by various scandals and consumer mistrust, the food sector is investing more and more in solutions for digitalizing self-checking.

In 2018, one of our bakery customers decided to reinforce its Food Safety throughout its network.

"We needed to motivate the teams to respect procedures. Asking them to fill in and scan sheets didn't allow us to support them effectively in their daily work. It seemed obvious that we needed a digital tool to support the field, monitor in real time and manage remotely", explains the company's Quality Manager.

In search of a solution that really fits

In 2019, after a test phase in competition with another solution, the Quality Manager and her team opted for Eezytrace.

"Eezytrace was more malleable. The solution is customizable and adapts to meet our needs. We are already benefiting from developments made at our request. We're even going further than HACCP, with the possibility of carrying out controls specific to our brand."

The equipped brand benefits, for example, from self-monitoring of products in display windows at the end of the day. 

"This inspection also allows the person carrying it out to take a customer's point of view. To see what he sees when he enters the bakery. This simple action has developed sales at the end of the day and avoids waste."

A first step towards compliance with procedures

In the early days, the implementation of the tool revealed the risks associated with paper-based HACCP controls.

"With paper, some sites found it difficult to follow procedures perfectly and comply with the regulatory minimum. Since the deployment of Eezytrace, self-checks are carried out throughout the day and automatically recorded. New employee training is a good example of how easy it is to use. We now only need 30 minutes' training where it used to take half a day."

The company has also freed itself from a number of traceability constraints, such as label cutting, archiving and storage on the premises, document printing and scanning, and so on. All this saves each site 2 hours a week.

The Quality Manager also uses the solution as a documentation base.

"We can remotely update all the elements of a bakery without having to reprint. In addition to the savings on paper and ink, we can talk about the hours saved. If you add up all the time saved on procedures, recipe sheets and promotional documents, you save over 2 hours a week. And we can be sure that they're using the latest version."

The old problem of tracking sheets filled in once a month has been solved with the introduction of mandatory frequencies and recordings on the tablet.

"The tool has been well understood and integrated by the teams, who are becoming increasingly involved in the subject. We no longer have to ask for self-controls to be carried out. Remote access to data enables real-time monitoring of what's being done on site. We're really into analyzing and monitoring what's going to be done every day."

Steering to protect and perpetuate the brand

The challenge for the team in charge of Food Safety was to ensure that procedures were carried out correctly at all 130 sites. By choosing Eezytrace and the Explore module, it now has access to an advanced analysis of its network, in real time and remotely.

"The solution detects risks that are invisible with simple site visits. We can react quickly, whereas in the past we would have realized a stall after 3 months, after an audit. Checking a site now takes 5 minutes, whereas it used to take 2 hours to carry out a complete document check."

The brand relies on Eezytrace's filters and data processing to highlight the information it needs.

"Every week, I display the 10 most at-risk sites. I can then put in place the necessary actions, such as training, interventions by our support staff, etc. The management tools enable me to obtain the data very simply. I produce weekly reports for the sector managers and management. This enables us to focus audits and visits by our monitors and sector managers on priority sites. And to see where we stand and our progress. "

With simplified access to data and the actual situation at a site, the company can be sure of meeting its internal procedures and regulatory expectations, such as cleaning controls, temperature controls, traceability, etc.

"We know the sanitary situation of each bakery and are never surprised by the result of a regulatory control. The use of Eezytrace is well regarded by the official services. The procedures are more thorough and better carried out."

A brand protected by Eezytrace

After several years of use, the Quality Manager has noted a return on investment that is difficult to quantify, but very real.

"The solution inevitably costs more than notebooks. But the challenge is to protect and perpetuate your brand. A site closure and damage to your brand can cost a lot more. It's a solution that's simple to implement, so you can avoid a lot of problems."