NEW ORLEANS — Inspire Brands may be a new company, but it’s made up of several mature brands: Arby’s, Baskin Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s and Sonic. That’s a combination for opportunity when it comes to equipment innovation.
During the Intralox NEXT conference, which took place March 8-9 in New Orleans, Chris Polito, director of supply food safety for Inspire, spoke to attendees about the importance of hygienic design and offered a unique insight into how to have the right mindset.
While these mature brands have historically operated independently from one another, under the Inspire leadership, they have been shifting how they operate, moving away from silos to integrating operations for a more streamlined processes across brands and outlets.
With a shared service model, the brand integrated food safety and quality into one entity under Inspire in 2020. That posed a specific challenge for Polito and his team.
“How would we design for the future?” Polito pondered. “I don’t get that opportunity too often. It’s a great one. What we did was hit the reset button on our journey in building best-in-class programs.”
Based on that journey, Polito shared four key practices he applied to Inspire’s restaurant design program. These are principles that can also be used to ensure the best possible hygienic equipment design in a commercial baking facility.
Having a roadmap with a detailed process is the first priority. But the map isn’t enough; it should be detailed and logical.
With that roadmap, a team can make informed decisions.
“Know what you’re buying,” Polito said. “Making informed decisions on equipment purchases is incredibly important.”
Diversity is key to staying informed. As Polito said, it takes a village by building a team around several different functions. That means pulling from departments such as maintenance, operations, food safety, QA, engineering or procurement.
Finally, test, test and then test again. At Inspire, that means creating scenarios to ensure the cleanability of equipment, or as Polito calls it, “Treat the machine like a teenager would.” At the company’s innovation center, which opened in 2021, tests on the hygienic design of equipment is done regularly, which ensures that the kitchens don’t have to worry about food safety on the machines at the restaurant level.
“When hygienic design is complex, it actually poses more challenges. It becomes harder to maintain, and that can lead to cutting corners.”— Chris Polito | director of supply food safety | Inspire Brands
At the commercial baking level, it’s a testament to the importance of factory-acceptance testing to ensure the equipment will run properly in the bakery’s own environment.
Employing these four principles has been a key for Inspire on its journey to innovate for efficiency and simplicity across the company’s six foodservice brands, especially in terms of hygienic design.
“Hygienic design does not have to be complex,” Polito said. “When hygienic design is complex, it actually poses more challenges. It becomes harder to maintain, and that can lead to cutting corners.”
When looking at relationships with supplier partners, Polito emphasized three priorities: being proactive, focusing on prevention and staying engaged.
“Those have been the three keys to success for us,” he told attendees. “And I bet they can cross over into your business functions as well.”
Polito also recommended taking time to have a deep focus on the design approval process to ensure quality expectations are incorporated into the sanitary design. That focus often comes from having boots on the ground and interacting directly with suppliers at their facilities.
“With onsite visits, you’re going to see the hygienic design from your suppliers,” he said.
While simplicity is at the core of hygienic equipment design, it takes a lot of work to get there. Staying the course is critical, and Polito said the key is remembering why it’s so important.
“It’s good to remind yourself about why any of this is important,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s to prevent recalls or outbreaks and, above all, to protect our consumers.”
