Safer Food, Better Business digital: keeping your SFBB diary and checks on a phone

What Safer Food, Better Business is

Safer Food, Better Business (SFBB) is a food safety management pack published by the Food Standards Agency for "restaurants, cafés, takeaways and other small catering businesses". It applies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are versions for caterers, retailers, childminders, care homes, and Indian and Chinese cuisine.

Why it matters: the law says every food business must put in place and maintain food safety procedures based on HACCP principles. SFBB is HACCP with the jargon taken out. You won't find the word "hazard" in it, but if you complete it properly and follow it, it does the job a HACCP plan does for a small kitchen. More on that in HACCP for small restaurants.

The sections of the caterers' pack

Two kinds of SFBB work

It helps to think of SFBB as two jobs that happen on very different timescales.

1. The safe methods: once, then reviewed

Each safe method has a "how do you do this?" column where you write what your kitchen actually does. You complete them before you start trading, then review and update them whenever something changes: a new menu, new equipment, a new supplier. The pack has a box at the front to record when it was first completed and each review.

This is thinking work. It belongs with the head chef or owner, sat down with a coffee, not on a phone at 7am.

2. The diary: every day

The diary is where most kitchens struggle. The FSA's instructions are clear:

• It should be filled in every day by the person responsible for running the business.
• Each day, tick to confirm opening checks and closing checks were done.
• If anything different happens or something goes wrong, note it under that day.
• Sign each day to say all the safe methods were followed.
• Record any extra checks at the end of the week (equipment maintenance, cleaning the freezer).
• Every four weeks, do the 4-weekly review: look back for persistent problems and write down how you'll tackle them, such as retraining staff or changing a method.

The pack also asks whether you need to keep more records than the diary, and answers: as a minimum, fill in the diary daily; depending on your business you may need more to show you're making food safely. SFBB's chilling method also asks you to check fridges at least once a day, starting with opening checks, so most kitchens keep temperature readings as well.

Why the paper diary breaks down

It's not that SFBB is bad. It's that a paper book in a busy kitchen has predictable failure points:

• The person responsible isn't there. The GM's day off is the day the diary doesn't get signed.
• It gets filled in later. A week of ticks in the same pen on Sunday night is easy to spot.
• Problems don't get written down. The fridge was warm on Tuesday, someone moved the food, nobody noted it. When the officer asks, there's no evidence you handled it.
• The 4-weekly review is skipped because nobody can face reading back through a month of ticks.
• It lives in one place. If you're the owner and not on site, you can't see whether today's checks were done.

What "SFBB digital" looks like in practice

Keeping SFBB records digitally doesn't mean throwing the pack away. A sensible split:

Mapping the diary to digital checks

Here's how the daily diary might look for a 6-person café opening at 7:30:

Opening checks (every day), based on the SFBB list

• Fridges, chilled display and freezer working properly (log each reading)
• Other equipment, such as the oven and coffee machine, working
• Staff fit for work and in clean work clothes
• Prep areas clean and disinfected
• No signs of pest activity
• Plenty of soap, paper towels and sanitiser; hot water at every sink and handwash basin
• Probe thermometer working, probe wipes available
• Allergen information accurate for everything on sale today

Closing checks (every day)

• All food covered, labelled and put in the fridge or freezer
• Food on its use-by date thrown away
• Dirty cleaning equipment cleaned or binned
• Waste removed and new bin bags in
• Prep areas clean and disinfected, washing up finished, floors swept
• "Prove it" checks recorded

You can add your own checks to either list; the SFBB pack says so.

Weekday extras

• Monday: probe check in iced and boiling water (first Monday of the month)
• Wednesday: deep clean the display counter
• Friday: freezer check for ice build-up and stock rotation

Every four weeks

• Review: any repeating problems? Any new staff needing training? Any menu, supplier or equipment changes that mean a safe method needs updating?

Making sure digital records hold up

If you move your daily records to an app, check it does these things, because these are what make records believable to an inspector:

1. Names and times are automatic. Nobody types their own initials or the time.
2. You can't quietly backfill. Entries made later should look later.
3. Problems have somewhere to go. A warm fridge or a pest sighting needs a note and an action, not just a tick.
4. You can show history. At least the last week at a glance, and older records on request.
5. You can export. If you change system or an officer wants a copy, you're not locked in.

In England, Wales and Scotland, officers have the power under the Food Safety Act 1990 to inspect records held electronically. If you're unsure whether your approach suits your local authority, ask them; they'd rather tell you now than find a gap later.

How ShiftComplete handles SFBB-style daily records

To be clear on what it is and isn't: ShiftComplete is not Safer Food, Better Business, and it isn't endorsed by the FSA. It's an everyday operations app for UK hospitality that can hold the repeating checks your SFBB pack asks for.

• Checklists that differ by weekday. Opening, closing, cleaning and due-diligence checks, with one-off priority tasks when you need them. Every tick is named and timestamped, with optional or required photo evidence. A 2am close still counts as "today".
• Temperature logs. Each fridge, freezer, hot-hold and ambient point has its own range. Readings are named and timestamped, out-of-range ones are flagged on the dashboard, and there's a 7-day rolling view.
• Incidents and maintenance. The "what went wrong and what you did" part of the diary, logged with a photo, severity, status and resolution notes.
• Weekly report. Task completion, temperature breaches, incidents and maintenance backlog in one rollup, which is a useful starting point for your 4-weekly review.
• Audit log with CSV export.

It runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or computer, costs £1.49 per staff member per month with everything included, and is free for 60 days with no card. You still need your completed safe methods, and you're still responsible for following them.