Davy’s has been selling fine and specially selected wines to bars and wholesalers across London for more than 150 years.
A fifth generation family business, maintaining the highest standards is core to its ongoing success. With 25 characterful wine bars, two wine shops and a wine merchants, Food Hygiene and Health & Safety are priorities. So, working with trusted partners to deliver Davy’s exacting standards and passion for quality is critical.
That’s where Food Alert stood out from the crowd, when Davy’s was looking for a partner that could provide an overarching solution in terms of structure, process and guidance. Since its appointment in 2017, Food Alert provides ongoing consultancy, audits, training and a digital platform on which to integrate Davy’s training and employee records.
Employing 349 people, training is incredibly important to Davy’s as talent development manager, Victoria Harrison, explains: “We not only need to ensure that our team can work safely and deliver the high standards customers rightly expect, but ensure we have a motivated and engaged team that enjoy what they do. Training is our mechanism for delivering this and developing talent from within.”
The content of the courses provided by Food Alert – covering topics such as Health & Safety Level 2, Food Hygiene Level 3, Food Safety Level 2 and Allergen Awareness – offer a mix of on-site, classroom and e-learning, which is structured to cater for those where English is a second language, thanks to the assistance of pictures.
All training courses and internal workshops are uploaded onto Food Alert’s integrated Food Safety and Health & Safety digital platform, ALERT65. This means they can easily be recorded on an employee’s profile, including associated certificates, and everything is logged and stored in one place. Any employee whose training is overdue is flagged, allowing Davy’s to quickly resolve.
Victoria explains: “Having our training visible on one platform, has allowed us to easily identify the training needs of individuals and select the right courses for them. ALERT65’s summary report has enabled operations managers to have a clear visual of training requirements and completed training in their area, which has added in succession and development decisions.”
Food Alert’s ALERT65 is the only fully integrated digital Food Safety and Health & Safety solution that is available online and in an app format via smartphone or tablet, allowing operators to focus on key risk areas to protect their brand and reputation from any location, at any time.
Having the ability to digitally create and schedule checklists and tasks can help automate the entire ‘due diligence’ process and reduce the likelihood of human error. In addition, being able to centrally manage HACCP documentation, risk assessments, incident logs, training summaries and maintenance records, streamlines the whole process while providing visibility of risk to busy managers.
But it’s not just Food Alert’s training and technology that Davy’s relies on. Its team of auditors offer approachable support for the managers, clearly explaining their decisions, while offering feedback and guidance.
“Working with Food Alert has been a positive experience, with honest, open communication and any challenges that arise from time to time are resolved quickly. Our training and audits are of the highest quality, which help us to keep top talent and maintain the very high standards on which our reputation has been built.
“But it’s ALERT65, which has transformed our processes and operations, so that we have a singular platform that connects our safety compliance requirements with our Learning Management System. This has reduced the amount of valuable time spent on administration, allowing our managers to focus on our customers and deliver a first class experience,” concludes Victoria.