Local Favorite Employee showing a diverse spread of food options

Use Case

Centralizing Certification Training and Tracking to Increase Compliance

with Local Favorite | 4 min read

The Challenge

Ensuring Certification Compliance from Coast to Coast

Local Favorite Restaurants® owns and operates a distinctive collection of popular restaurant concepts, responsible for running over 50 food service operators from coast-to-coast. In addition to their restaurant locations, Local Favorite also owns and manages Sunrise Mexican Foods, which produces high-quality Mexican food products for retail and food service operators on a national scale. 

With this expansive scope of business, Local Favorite experienced difficulties tracking and ensuring employees’ food and beverage certifications were up to date, and communicating when they needed to obtain these certifications. Requirements vary depending on location, and with a high degree of turnover in the restaurant industry, it proved particularly challenging to ensure each employee was meeting certification standards.

The Solution

Switching to Digital Tracking Methodologies

To address these compliance related challenges, Local Favorite made the switch from an outdated pen and paper system with physical manuals and tracking limitations to a centralized digital system. In doing so, they were able to provide standardized resources for restaurant employees and upper management alike, and establish the streamlined process they needed to ensure compliance across their locations nationwide.

Consolidating with a Digital Library

To initiate change, Local Favorite first had to compile the physical copies of their training materials and brand resources, consolidate the individual components, and integrate them into a digitized library. They established this library on their LMS, Local Favorite University, and organized their homepage by specific brand information. 

To cover their bases more broadly, however, they also created a general resources tab that accounted for more general industry information. By clicking into this section employees could find relevant information, including the food handlers training certifications, state alcohol certifications and manager certifications. This singular point of reference ensures that industry training resources are accurate and readily accessible for all employees, while allowing management to communicate current industry information with greater ease.

Enhancing Tracking Ability with Configured Permissioning 

Once Local Favorite compiled their resources in a centralized location, they were able to focus on enhancing their ability to track employee Food & Beverage certifications. Through easily configured permissioning, they equipped management with the ability to pull their employees’ certification completion statistics, see who needs to complete the food safety modules, and identify which employees have expiring credentials. Managers receive notifications when employee certifications are 30 days out from expiration so they can inform their employees to get the necessary re-certifications.

Increasing Completion Rates by Linking to External Resources

To come full circle, Local Favorite established easy pathways so employees would utilize the provided resources. When employees are notified that they need to complete a renewal, they can login to the Local Favorite University and click directly into the food handler certification module. This automatically redirects employees to the food safety certification website so they can complete the required courses. This easy process allows employees to access important information, and creates a more cohesive training experience.

The Benefits

Increased Compliance and Better Training

20%

increase in
compliance

Since Local Favorite has taken the steps to organize their resources, establish reliable tracking and data integrations, and entrench easily navigable learning pathways, they have seen a huge uptick in certifications. By using their LMS to pull relevant metrics and track certifications, management can now ensure that they meet city and state compliance standards without missing a beat – an important requirement as a food and alcohol service. 

By increasing the efficiency of the certification process, Local Favorite saves on important resources – such as time and money. Rather than spending hours searching through potentially outdated paperwork, they can now focus on more important pursuits, such as investing in their employees, and spending time leading their teams. This expanded view continues the process of improvement, and allows them to invest in their employees’ needs for growth by both upskilling and reskilling.