A Recipe for Success… Shield Safety Bolsters Safety Management for Pasta Evangelists

Shield Safety, a leading UK provider of professional services and software solutions across food safety, health and safety and fire safety, is celebrating its recent success in working closely with Pasta Evangelists to heighten safety management.

Following the rapid expansion of Pasta Evangelists’ nationwide network of kitchens that supply ready-to-eat meals directly to the home, a comprehensive and robust food safety and health and safety system was required. The challenge for the Quality and Safety Director, Debra Piergentili, was to balance the needs of maintaining food, health and fire safety standards within an expanding business and growing workforce.

Debra, who has a wealth of expertise having previously worked for two well-known High Street outlets in the UK and USA, understood the importance of having robust support to deal with a growing number of locations and easy-to-follow safety systems. She explained: “Our procedures need to be easily applied and it is essential for a growing organisation to have the same high standards across the business. I knew Shield Safety could help us. Having worked with them previously, I knew its safety framework and systems would give us the management procedures we needed.”

Rob Easton, Head of Environmental Health at Shield Safety added: “A safety management system was required which did not impact a kitchen’s efficiency and was capable of being scaled to meet the business’s growth. The first thing to understand was what food safety, health and safety and fire safety policies Pasta Evangelists used in its kitchens. This gave us the knowledge to devise a set of policies, assessments and checklists to be the standard for use across the estate.”

Invaluably, to support staff training, Shield Safety created a training matrix to help Pasta Evangelists identify skill gaps and provide bespoke training aids, so kitchen staff understood their roles in recording and managing the new food, health and safety and fire safety systems.

Debra added: “Shield delivered a set of clear, easy-to-follow procedures and checks designed for our needs.”

As a safety review, the firm also carried out fire risk assessments across Pasta Evangelists 40 kitchens to ensure the business is fully compliant with the latest legalisation and best practices. Shield Safety completed both the safety training and a full fire assessment review within just one month.

To manage the new procedures, Shield Safety implemented its pioneering software system, ‘RiskProof’. Debra commented: “When instigating new procedures, carrying on using the paper-based recording system was pointless. Such a system can lead to errors and is ultimately impossible to monitor from a distance. With kitchen teams using tablets to enter data, it made sense to use Shield Safety’s cloud-based system RiskProof. It allows us to manage access to the information on a need-to-know basis so a kitchen or area manager can only see data relevant to their role. I can log in to RiskProof and choose a date or time of day, or select a location to see that all checks are complete and correctly recorded.”

“Where RiskProof really benefits the business is being able to check on specifics such as knowing the temperature of certain ingredients when they were delivered, check that the fridges are at the right temperature, and whether a serving of a cooked sauce was at the correct temperature in any selected kitchen location.

Significantly, Pasta Evangelists also utilises RiskProof’s Registry module to record and oversee fire safety activities such as fire extinguisher checks, extraction unit and canopy cleaning and electrical testing records.

Speaking of the partnership, Debra said: “With Shield Safety, I have the food safety, health and safety and risk management system that enables me to ensure that all our sites are fully compliant and safe. We have seen how RiskProof and the services Shield Safety offers provides us with an easy-to-manage system which will provide us with the information we need to ensure the continued success of Pasta Evangelists.”

Pasta Evangelists was established in 2016 when it launched restaurant-quality recipe kits offering fresh artisanal pasta and high-quality sauces. It is now the biggest pasta brand by revenue in the UK.

In 2020, it began offering hot restaurant standard meals through a range of dishes and chef’s specials delivered by services such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat to customers within 20 minutes of placing an order. Since its launch, the success of the home delivery service has seen it grow from a single kitchen unit in East London to more than 40 across the UK and a flagship restaurant at Harrods by mid-2023.

Shield Safety is the trusted name in food safety, health and safety and fire safety. For over 20 years they have been protecting people everywhere, using their expertise to advance safety, so that businesses are able to meet and maintain the highest possible standards.

The business combines the highest level of safety expertise in the sector along with its award-winning software ”RiskProof’, to deliver safety solutions that give operators peace of mind and make safety easier, so they can focus on what they do best: running businesses, delighting customers, and securing their own success.

For more information on Shield Safety Group please visit: https://shieldsafety.co.uk/

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Modern Hospitality – 14 May 2024