The problem
A bakery's checks start at 5am: core temperatures on sausage rolls and pasties, cooling before they go in the chiller, cream cakes in the display fridge, chilled deliveries of butter and cream. On paper, the diary gets filled in at the end of the shift or not at all. If the owner spends 40 minutes a week checking the diary, chasing gaps and filing pages, that's 40 x 4.3 = 172 minutes, nearly 3 hours a month.
What the AI does
Mitti, until recently sold as SafetyCulture, is a checklist and inspection app. Its pricing page lists a Free plan for up to 10 seats with 5 active inspection templates, tasks and issue reporting, and PDF and web reports. Build five templates from the checks your Safer Food, Better Business pack or HACCP plan already sets: opening, cooking and cooling of hot savouries, chilled display and fridges, deliveries in (and the café van going out), and closing with cleaning. Bakers complete each check on a phone at the time, with a photo of the probe reading where it matters, and the owner reads the report each day. The app records what staff enter; calibrated probes and trained bakers do the checking.
A worked example
A craft bakery in Ludlow with the owner, a second baker and three counter staff makes pasties, sausage rolls and cream cakes every morning and supplies four cafés. It moves its Safer Food, Better Business diary to five Mitti templates on the bakers' phones.
Before
40 minutes a week checking, chasing and filing the paper diary: 40 x 4.3 = 172 minutes, about 2.9 hours a month
After
12 minutes a week reading reports and acting on anything out of range: 12 x 4.3 = 52 minutes, under 1 hour a month
What it's worth
About $48£36€43A$69C$68 a month of the owner's time saved, at no cost on the Free plan. That's 2 hours (172 minus 52 = 120 minutes) at an assumed $24£18€21A$35C$34 an hour. Five templates and up to 10 seats fit the Free plan; Premium is $24 (about $24£18€21A$35C$34) a seat a month billed annually if you need more templates. A diary that's complete when the environmental health officer visits isn't priced.
How to set it up
- List every check your Safer Food, Better Business pack or HACCP plan sets, with who does it and when, from the first bake to closing.
- Sign up for the Free plan and build five templates: opening, cooking and cooling, chilled display and fridges, deliveries in and out, and closing with cleaning.
- Make the temperature and 'what did you do about it' fields required, and add a photo field for probe readings on hot savouries and cream cakes.
- Add a line to the deliveries template to record any supplier or ingredient change and pass it to the person who checks your allergen information and labels.
- Give seats to the bakers and the counter lead only, read the report every afternoon, and export a month of reports to your own files.
What goes wrong
- The app records what staff type. A wrong reading entered is still wrong, so calibrate probes and train every baker on the checks.
- The Free plan stops at 5 active templates and 10 seats, and prices are per seat in dollars. Combine checks into five templates before you start.
- Phones in a hot, floury bakehouse get left in lockers. Agree where the shared phone lives during the bake, and keep a paper sheet for the day it breaks.
- Check how long your plan keeps records, export them regularly and ask your local food team if they're happy with digital records.