Laclary’s ‘Hygiene Care for Diners’ programme is a Hong Kong restaurant hygiene app. Designed to reassure diners of the cleanliness of Hong Kong restaurants and cafes, the app offers daily sanitation updates and information on menus, ambiance, and price.
Hong Kong Restaurants
Ever since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus in the food and beverage industry has been on social distancing.
In some jurisdictions, governments simply shut restaurants down. In others, they only allowed restaurants to serve takeaway or make deliveries. Or both …
While the government in Hong Kong allowed food and beverage outlets to remain open, they had to reduce the number of diners. At first, that meant they could only seat 50% of a restaurant’s capacity. Then they increased the ratio.
As the number of local coronavirus transmissions drops, so have the restrictions on diners. But what about hygiene?
It’s one thing to take customers’ temperatures when they enter an establishment. And it is another to require staff to wear facemasks. But what about the hygiene standards in restaurant kitchen?
This seems to have been the proverbial elephant in the room. Is the food itself safe?
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On-Line Food Safety Platform
Laclary offers platforms that help consumers ascertain the quality of the products they use. In fact, it offers safety certification for various sectors.
In cooperation with Intertek – a multinational assurance, inspection, product testing, and certification body – it has launched a Hong Kong restaurant hygiene app. The app is called “Hygiene Care for Diners”.
The on line food safety platform is designed to reassure Hong Kong diners that the restaurants and cafes they dine at are safe places to consume food and beverage.
How the Hong Kong Restaurant Hygiene App Works
First, Intertek carries out an inspection of participating restaurants. Then it takes items from the restaurant kitchen and tests them in a laboratory.
Next, Laclary verifies that the restaurants meet their standards. If they do, it awards them a certificate and a sticker with a QR code. And restaurants can display these in their dining rooms.
Then, Laclary maintains cleaning records of participating eateries. It posts these records on its website, where diners can check them out. Each restaurant is assigned its own page, where restaurants can identify their hygiene practices.
In addition to hygiene practices, the restaurants can also showcase daily real-time cleaning records, signature dishes, and other information.
But what happens if a restaurant doesn’t meet Laclary’s safety criteria? I reached out to the company for clarification.
“If a restaurant does not meet the standards, we would direct them to a Japan-engineered Hybrid Photocatalyst coating and treatment service Lohaslore so they could help with the hygiene of the restaurant before conducting the test again,” a spokeswoman for the company explained in an email.
So far nearly 50 restaurants are on board.
How to Access Restaurant Information
Meanwhile, diners can access this information on their computers, tablets, or mobile phones. And they can easily call up these pages upon arrival at restaurants by scanning the QR codes posted at the entrance.
“Traceability is a very important concept and a lot of restaurants have been starting to use traceability measures to maximize safety of food, especially with the increase of sustainable and organic resources used,” Howie Wong, Vice Chairman of Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants & Related Trade, says.
“Since being in the F&B industry for 20 years, I’ve experienced hardships like SARS and COVID-19. Although the situation is disheartening, I have seen that Laclary has been able to aid the restaurants into upholding their hygiene standards as well as publicizing them to customers city-wide.”
Future Applications
Anina Ho, Founder of Laclary, believes there is a huge potential for third-party certification in Hong Kong.
“I foresee Laclary going above and beyond just helping the F&B industry,” she says.
“Hong Kong has a lot of ethical companies and businesses, and we are here to aid the ones that are trying to do greater good in the city. No matter how small or big the impact they think their business is, we want to highlight that and have it shine out of the rest of the businesses.”
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That’s a great idea!