Food Guard vs FoodDocs

FoodDocs states it can generate a HACCP plan including hazard analysis, critical control points, flow charts, SOPs and monitoring records in under an hour.

So can we. Our HACCP plan builder works from a sector template and gets you to a working draft in the same timeframe. Speed of plan generation is not the difference between these two products, so it is worth being clear about what is.

The short version

Where FoodDocs is the better fit

Two cases where they are the right call.

• You trade into North America. They carry FDA frameworks as well as European ones. We deliberately do not.
• You already own sensors you want to keep. They state an open API that works with existing providers, which avoids replacing hardware.

Where Food Guard fits better

You are inspected by an EHO, not the FDA

This is our whole design constraint. Critical limits in Celsius against Irish and UK figures: 75°C cooking, 63°C hot holding, 5°C chilled, below 8°C within 90 minutes. Not 165°F, not 135°F, not FDA Food Code cooling schedules.

A platform serving both markets has to carry both frameworks. Ours only carries yours. See the figures that apply here and who enforces them.

A generated plan is a starting point, not a system

Producing a plan quickly is the easy half, and both products do it. The hard half is the plan staying connected to the records that evidence it, so changing a critical limit changes the check sheets monitoring it, and so an auditor asking for a random Sunday in March gets an answer.

Ask both vendors that second question rather than the first. See how the plan and records stay linked.

Someone local answers the phone

Louis in Dublin, Noel in the UK, both named on the site with direct numbers. When an inspector is standing in your kitchen, response time matters more than feature parity.

Production traceability

Batch codes at production, ingredient lots linked to runs, recipes with allergens, mass balance on export. Built with and for people who supply the multiples.

Pizza Sorrento supply Aldi, Lidl and SuperValu, went paper to fully digital in four weeks and took BRC AA afterwards. Greenaway Foods aligned their BRC processes to it and describe audit preparation becoming a search function. See all three case studies.

Per site pricing, published

€19.99 or €79 per site per month, unlimited users on every plan, no contract. You can work out five sites without speaking to anyone.

Where they overlap

Both are cloud based, both work offline on mobile, both digitise HACCP records and temperature monitoring, both produce audit ready reports. Both are considerably better than paper.

How to decide

1. Ask both where your data is hosted, and get it in writing.
2. Ask both what temperature limits their templates default to. If the answer involves Fahrenheit, you know which market the product was designed for.
3. Ask both what happens when a supplier calls about a batch.
4. Test support response time before you buy, not after.

Other comparisons

• Food Guard vs Kelsius, Irish, hardware led, since 2003
• Food Guard vs KitchTech, kitchen focused, Irish
• What ours costs, published, per site

Try Food Guard on your own week.