Where it started
I grew up in the family restaurant — washing up first, then prep, then most other jobs over the years. Food safety there wasn't a document; it was the morning routine. Fridges checked, deliveries probed, surfaces down. The paperwork came afterwards, when someone remembered.
Twenty years across the trade
Since then I've run food operations in pubs and hotels. More staff, more appliances, more inspections — and the same things going wrong everywhere. Checks done but not written down. The diary filled in from memory at the end of the week. A four-weekly review that was nearly always late — not through carelessness, just because it lived in a folder in an office nobody sat in.
“The checks were being done. The record of them was the problem.”
Ben Bowen · Founder, Rated5
The hardest place to comply
Catering units were the hardest — temporary and mobile setups with no office, no filing cabinet, and staff who are only there for the season. The legal duties are exactly the same as a permanent kitchen. The infrastructure for meeting them isn't.
The problem with paper
None of this is the SFBB pack's fault — it's a well-designed system. It just assumes someone has time, mid-service, to find the folder and fill in a page, and in a real kitchen that's the first thing that stops happening. Entries get backfilled. Days go missing. Sign-off sheets get signed without being read.
The decision
I didn't want to invent a new food safety method — the FSA already has one, and every EHO in the country works to it. So Rated5 follows the Safer Food Better Business structure as it is, section for section. The app changes where the records live and how they get made, not what they are.
The principles
- Records can't be edited or backdated — corrections are added on top.
- Sign-off is tracked properly — when a method changes, everyone signs it again.
- Safe temperatures are built in, per UK nation.
- One price, everything included.
“If it slows the kitchen down, it doesn't go in.”
Ben Bowen · Founder, Rated5
Today
Rated5 runs every day in a working restaurant kitchen. Features get tested in a real service before they ship — if something doesn't hold up on a busy night, it gets changed.