Good Cold Chain Management is a Secret Ingredient for Freshness and Quality at Legal Sea Foods In 1968, the Berkowitz family opened its first seafood restaurant, right next to the family’s fish market in Cambridge, MA. The fish was simply prepared - either broiled or fried - and served on paper plates at communal picnic tables. Despite the low-key trappings, the food was second to none and word spread quickly. Today, Legal Sea Foods remains a family-owned business and enjoys an international reputation for serving only the freshest, best-quality fish and shellfish, which it processes at its own state-of-the-art plant. Thus, the company’s credo remains “If it isn’t Fresh, it isn’t Legal!” From the plain grilled finfish, fresh daily seasonal oysters, mammoth steamed lobsters, and awardwinning chowders to the decadent desserts and exceptional wine list, Legal Sea Foods sets the standard for quality and freshness--and the process begins long before anything lands on a plate. Subsequent to the FDA’s Seafood Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Regulations (21 CFR part 123) taking effect in 1997, Legal Sea Foods began working with Sensitech Inc. to develop a store-level quality program focused on identifying temperature-related food safety hazards. Using QuickCheck® – Sensitech’s hand-held unit used for documenting critical control points (CCPs) during processing, cooling, storage and receiving – as part of their internal inspection program, all 30+ retail locations are required to monitor temperatures in several locations throughout the store: receiving, prep, cold storage, hot holding, final cooking, and reheating. Items identified for monitoring range from raw fish to chowders, sauces and vegetables to the prepared plated item. “Using QuickCheck enables us to monitor the temperatures of dozens of items – both hot and cold – to ensure only the highest quality is delivered to our customers,” said John Ciarametaro, Assistant Director of Quality Assurance QCC and Restaurants at Legal Sea Foods. “But it’s the corrective action feature built into QuickCheck that empowers every employee to make and document those important discard decisions whenever necessary.” Legal’s Quality Assurance team personally inspects every store at least once per month. Time and temperature records collected by the retail staff are downloaded from QuickCheck. Records are reviewed and evaluated to ensure that employees are compliant with Legal’s HACCP program, but store-level quality was not nearly enough for Legal. As an industry leader, Legal decided to adopt a proactive HACCP approach to cold chain management throughout their entire supply chain. Beginning in their technically sophisticated seafood processing center, Legal realized that relying on temperature alarms to indicate problems was too late in the game. Rather, they needed to understand what processes and actions could lead to alarm conditions. The ongoing monitoring and evaluation enables Quality Assurance to respond to trends before they become problems. For example, temperature management is a critical control point for seafood. The shelf life for fresh crab is very narrow; temperatures must be kept between 32oF and 36oF throughout the Sensitech Inc. • 800 Cummings Center • Suite 258X • Beverly, MA 01915-6197 • USA: 1-800-843-8367 • Int’l: +1-978-927-7033 • Fax: 978-921-2112 wholesale/retail distribution system to ensure maximum quality and freshness. Furthermore, at a retail price of over $20 per pound for crabmeat, you can’t afford to make mistakes. In support of Legal Sea Foods’ desire to monitor proactively, Sensitech introduced ColdStream™ Stationary Temperature Monitoring (STM). ColdStream STM is an RF-enabled application that monitors ambient temperatures automatically, 24/7. Legal installed the application in multiple rooms to continuously monitor temperature in highly sensitive areas such as storage for crabmeat, shellfish, lobster and finfish; the wet-goods cooler; cold prep; production and refrigerated receiving. With ColdStream STM, Legal ensures full compliance of its HACCP program, including permanent record keeping for audit support with date, time, and temperature readings at every location every five minutes. Legal receives a daily report outlining every location across a seven day window. According to John Olson, Legal Sea Foods vice president of QCC Operations, “We now have the luxury of knowing every time any of our areas are out of spec – there is no guesswork involved. If a prep cook leaves the freezer open, we know it. If the air conditioning system is running too cold, we know it. We even know when the cleaners are doing their job, since we can see the temperature spikes indicating that the doors are left open. We can eliminate the manual clipboard checks and have accurate records to meet our HACCP needs – these two things alone save us time and money.” The final link in Legal’s comprehensive cold chain management program was the “last mile” or distribution-center-to-store segment. All Legal Sea Foods’ trucks are equipped with GPS systems to track daily store deliveries. However, Legal did not have visibility into the conditions within each truck and were not aware of factors that could possibly impact the quality of the seafood, which they had worked to hard to maintain. Reacting to bad deliveries is not the way to deliver quality. Sensitech Inc. • 800 Cummings Center • Suite 258X • Beverly, MA 01915-6197 • USA: 1-800-843-8367 • Int’l: +1-978-927-7033 • Fax: 978-921-2112 ColdStream Closed Loop (CL) – another Sensitech RF-enabled application - was installed on every vehicle to record temperatures every hour. Adding this new functionality was easy since it uses the infrastructure already in place to support ColdStream STM. Legal’s quality team receives daily reports via e-mail, with a temperature history by vehicle over the past 48 hours. Having insight into events is good process control and provides the team with information it needs to enable it to lower operating and maintenance costs. Legal Sea Foods sets the standard for quality and freshness – they truly walk the walk at every step of their supply chain. Partnering with Sensitech for more than 10 years has enabled Legal to adopt a variety of solutions that fit their way of doing business, not the other way around. “There is no question that using better diagnostic tools has netted us a sustainable return on investment (ROI) at every step of the supply chain,” says Ciarametaro. “We only select partners who can demonstrate high quality in their products, services and people. Sensitech gives us confidence in our cold chain management practices, and that’s just what I need to sleep at night.” About Legal Sea Foods, Inc. Legal Sea Foods Inc. has set the standard for quality and freshness in the seafood and restaurant business. With more than 30 restaurants up and down the East Coast, Legal Sea Foods has earned scores of honors and awards and proudly carries its well-earned reputation as the nation’s finest seafood restaurant. For more information about Legal Sea Foods and its locations, please visit www.legalseafoods.com. About Sensitech Inc. As the world’s leading provider of cold chain visibility solutions, Sensitech enables global leaders in the food and pharmaceutical industries to track and monitor assets across the supply chain to protect the integrity of temperature-sensitive products. Sensitech is an ISO 9001:2000 company and is based in Beverly, Mass., with offices in Amsterdam, Calgary, Melbourne, Redmond and Santiago, as well as service and distribution offices around the world. Sensitech is a unit of Carrier Corp. For additional information, please call +1-978-927-7033 or visit www.sensitech.com. Sensitech Inc. • 800 Cummings Center • Suite 258X • Beverly, MA 01915-6197 • USA: 1-800-843-8367 • Int’l: +1-978-927-7033 • Fax: 978-921-2112 About Carrier Corp. Headquartered in Farmington, Conn., Carrier Corp. is the world’s largest provider of heating, airconditioning and refrigeration solutions with operations in more than 170 countries. Carrier is part of United Technologies Corp., a Hartford, Connecticut-based provider of products and services to the aerospace and building systems industries worldwide. Visit www.carrier.com for more information. Sensitech Inc. • 800 Cummings Center • Suite 258X • Beverly, MA 01915-6197 • USA: 1-800-843-8367 • Int’l: +1-978-927-7033 • Fax: 978-921-2112