New surveillance cameras are helping Restaurant Brands in New Zealand maintain its fast food outlets’ food safety standards.
The corporate body is responsible for New Zealand’s KFC, Pizza Hut and Carl’s Jr. restaurants, as well as its Starbucks cafés.
The company installed surveillance cameras in five KFC restaurants as a pilot program in 2011. Since then it has rolled out cameras into all New Zealand KFC and Carl’s Jr. stores, as well as selected Starbucks and Pizza Huts. These 1350 cameras across 115 sites represent two-thirds of Restaurant Brands New Zealand’s business.
Cameras Helping to Monitor Safe Food Preparation
An average of 12 cameras per store help Restaurant Brands New Zealand monitor its food preparation areas, offices, cash registers, and car parks. The footage, which is kept for 30 days, helps managers assess the day-to-day running of their stores. This is particularly important for food preparation and safety, explained Geoff Holton, Restaurant Brands New Zealand’s commercial manager of information technology.
“We can go and have a look at a make table, where they are making pizzas, or a cut table where they are cutting and boxing it, or a breading table in a KFC store, where they are actually breading the chicken and preparing it before it goes in,” he told Computerworld New Zealand. “That is all about food safety, ensuring the quality of the product, managing waste and staffing levels again.”
Managers Impressed With Results
The cameras also help area managers effectively monitor their local stores, solve loss prevention problems, and minimise security threats at its outlets.
Surveillance cameras are now installed in all new Restaurant Brands New Zealand outlets. Mr. Holton says he’s impressed by their performance, particularly considering the harsh restaurant environments.
“We have a lot of heat, a lot of flare, so quite harsh,” he explained. “But we have been really happy with the way the cameras have operated. I have a service team and we monitor when camera service is affected or goes offline entirely. The failure rate with these cameras are less than one percent. So we are really happy with the way they are functioning.”
