It’s no surprise that quality assurance plays an extremely important role in the food industry. After all, it’s about managing the safety and health of consumers, by following some pretty vital protocols.
Whilst we love all things food, we understand the need to be extremely cautious, proactive and careful in our handling and packaging of it.
Why? Because we want to ensure that our creamy chicken pie is tip-top and our beef stroganoff is flawless, so that you can enjoy your meals with peace of mind!
How do we actively work to prevent defects during processing?
At Fresh 5 attention to detail is key, and moving quickly helps us to ensure not only that the nutritional value of each meal is locked in, but that its freshness and safety is maintained too.
To ensure that food is cooled quickly, steps are taken to safely promote this process. For example, cooked foods are taken out of the large containers that they were prepared in and placed into smaller containers so that they will cool quicker.
Once foods have stopped giving off steam and the temperature has dropped to 21℃ it is placed in the fridge, cool room or freezer to cool to below 5℃.
With all meals cooled and packed as fast as they can be, you can enjoy your Friday night Thai Green Chicken Curry, with freshness and safety in mind.
How do used by and prepared dates help me to consume my meals safely at home?
Those little white labels are not to be ignored! In fact, they play a seriously vital role in ensuring that your meals continue to be prepared safely once they have been delivered to you.
Our frozen meal selections are dated from packing, that way you can stay in the know about when they were prepared. Upon delivery, continue to ensure that they remain frozen by promptly storing them in your freezer.
Ready to enjoy your frozen selection? Pull your meal out the night before to fit your schedule, so that you can stay flexible when life gives you lemons. Love them, eat them within 3 days and make sure to heat them. In short, once defrosted, these meals should be treated like any other of your favourite leftovers!
Our fresh meals on the other hand have a very specific date to be consumed before. You’ll see this on our white label recorded as the Used By Date. The date marked gives a guide as to how long food can be kept for before it begins to deteriorate or may become unsafe to eat.
But don’t let this scare you away from fresh selections - just be mindful, plan ahead and enjoy your meal within the date range knowing that the hard work is done for you!
What are some systems we have in place at Fresh 5 to assure quality?
Monitoring System
We love being in the know, prepared and informed, and that’s why we recently installed a new monitoring system to our refrigerators and freezers.
Why are we so excited about this, you might ask? Because it allows us to monitor the temperatures of our meals and track your food to ensure that it remains at a consistent and safe degree.
The system notifies us if any extremes were to occur, so that we can take the appropriate measures to reprepare another batch of your delicious orders if necessary. Put simply, we just wouldn’t risk it!
Nitrile Blue Gloves
Okay, so blue might not be everyone’s work uniform of choice, but we definitely rate it. The use of pharmaceutical grade gloves when preparing fresh produce is an important step for us in ensuring that food is prepped to hygiene standards.
Hair Contained
There’s nothing worse than having a meal cooked for you and finding an uninvited guest buried within. It’s just a BIG no, no in our books!
That’s why we ensure that hair is appropriately contained throughout the cooking and packaging process, so that you can avoid any surprises in your meal.
The only warranted look of surprise we encourage - is that as you relish in the flavours!
What if something unexpected was found in my meal?
We’re going to start off by cutting right to the chase, this has not occurred! But, we pride ourselves on service here at Fresh 5 and we can’t deny that human error can happen.
Whilst we have a long list of measures in place to ensure a set product quality standard and prevent defects during the processing stage, external factors, although managed, could interrupt this.
In short, if you were to experience anything out of the ordinary, we want to know about it! Any concerns that you may have, it’s important to notify the Fresh 5 team immediately, as we pride ourselves on safety, quality and service.
