5-Star Traceability with FormWeigh.Net

When the owner of a five-star restaurant expanded to give the world access to his famous meatballs, he needed to make sure his recipe was followed precisely – or risk the reputation of his renowned cuisine. His new recipe formulation software helped him to ensure the batch consistency he expected for every meatball.

Restaurant Chef Natale Grande’s meatballs have always gotten rave reviews. In fact, he got so many requests for the delectable orbs that he decided to start a side business to distribute them far and wide. Today, TheFlyingMeatballs.com offers not just Grande’s meatballs, but a whole range of specialty Italian foods.

Getting The Flying Meatballs off the ground wasn’t as easy as Grande might have hoped, however. While he had his treasured meatball method and a scheme to package up to five variations for easy home preparation, the commercial kitchen he rented was three hours away. How was he going to keep an eye on production, and ensure that operators were following his recipes to the letter? To try to keep the whole production aloft, Grande would place orders for raw materials. His employees would receive them and generate an internal lot number. Grande would then connect remotely at day’s end to see what had been received. He needed comprehensive traceability, which would not only impact food quality but also help him comply with the food regulations he faced as a producer of packaged goods.

Comprehensive traceability

At a food industry trade show in 2012, Grande was introduced to all solutions for the meat and ready-meal industry from METTLER TOLEDO that support food quality and traceability. Grande began to believe that he might be able to more fully trust his process and personnel with the adoption of the right technology. With the help of Jack Algieri and Otto Torrisi from the Atlantic Scale Company, Grande put together a plan to ensure transparency and traceability for his entire production process. From the adoption of the recipe software FormWeigh.Net® to ensure batch-to-batch consistency to ICS429 bench scales to speed up accurate weighing, Grande knew he not only had a winning recipe, but a winning process.

Ingredients well managed

Today, with FormWeigh.Net and add-ons, such as barcode readers and printers, Grande’s workers can input and manage raw materials and other stock so to ensure its use on a first-expire, first-out basis. Spoilage and waste have become all but eliminated. Plus, with centralized data management, Grande can easily monitor his stock at any time. With real inventory awareness, assured product consistency, and farm-to-fork traceability, Grande sleeps better at night. He has built The Flying Meatballs product quality and brand reputation based on the same quality his patrons have come to expect at his restaurant. Natale Grande attributes his growing success to products and service solutions from METTLER TOLEDO

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