HISD Nutrition Services Quality Control Representative Jeffery Chenier conducts food inspections in school kitchens using a new web-based inspection application.

Every day, HISD Nutrition Services quality control representatives visit school cafeteria kitchens to ensure that food is safe to serve and kitchens meet the city’s safety standards.

Nutrition Services recently upgraded its quality control inspection process with a new mobile application that allows for faster food-safety assessments. The new application helps quality control representatives inspect more schools and share more information with other departments.

“The application easily tracks scores for each school and we are able to send the reports directly to the operations team,” said Quality Assurance Manager Heather Kohn. “We can also attach pictures, giving a better understanding of the issues that need to be addressed.” Kohn added that Nutrition Services puts great emphasis on food safety and the prevention of foodborne illnesses in the district’s school kitchens.

Since its October launch, the app has reduced the amount of paper and equipment used during inspections. “The application is doing everything we asked for,” said Senior Business Systems Analyst Daquer Reveron. “All the notes, pictures, and videos are part of a single electronic document.”

The department’s quality control team is responsible for inspecting more than 300 kitchens across the district. Nutrition Services complies with laws and regulations issued by the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and state and local agencies.