“We ask our cooks to do so much, so it’s a relief to know they don’t have to keep those temperature logs anymore.”

Student Nutrition Director, Ohio School

Ohio School District Combats Aging Freezers with Affordable Mobile App-based Temperature Monitoring

Veteran Nutrition Director turns to HPS GPO vendor, Sonicu, to protect his students’ meals and automate compliance requirements.

The student nutrition director at a northern Ohio public school district knows simple mistakes can have dire consequences for his team of student nutrition specialists.

When a member of his team accidentally left a walk-in freezer door open for a whole weekend last year, staff returned Monday morning to find more than $1,000 in food lost.

“I was able to go to my other schools and pull stuff together to feed the kids, but it shouldn’t have to be that way,” the veteran student nutrition director said. “A simple mistake should not cost us so much money and frustration.”

That was the second, and last time, he suffered a significant food loss from what he knows is a preventable loss of temperature in a freezer.

A few years ago, a storm knocked out power overnight, but the freezer did not turn back on when power was restored.

“That was a warning call on top of the regular outages we have with our aging units,” he said.

“Temperature monitoring was always something we knew was on our radar, and I’m glad we pulled the trigger to have that peace of mind we do today.”

The Sonicu system was a natural extension of the director’s commitment to serving the best possible food to his students.

“If I wouldn’t eat it, I won’t serve it,” he said. “I always want to know our team is serving the best possible food to our students.” 

A Passion for Student Safety: Nutrition and Education

The longtime student nutrition director worked several years in the food industry before he was inadvertently introduced to student nutrition.

“I was getting older and wanting to settle down and make a family, so finding a more stable job was important,” he explained.

“I never really thought about working for the schools until I saw the job open up, but I was lucky enough to fall in love with the missions and the job. I found my passion and love taking care of the students.”

Food safety is one of the central planks of his role in taking care of the students at the Northeast Ohio district, serving 2,300 pupils at five buildings, including three elementary schools.

He leads a team of 23 employees – all focused on ensuring students have the nutrition they need to foster the best learning environment.

The district is located in one of the more economically challenged parts of Ohio, and many families rely on the school food program as a core part of their meal planning.

“A lot of these kids may not get a good meal at home,” he said. “We take a lot of pride in making sure they get a very good meal when they’re at school.”

The string of preventable losses made them well aware of the uncertain nature of the freezers and refrigerators.

“It’s all about safety when you talk about feeding these students, and the fact is we’re only here from 7 to 3 Monday to Friday,” he said. “There was just too much time that we didn’t know what was going on with our (cold storage) units, and that made me nervous.”

“And when you add the fact I was losing freezers left and right to mechanical issues, it was a no-brainer to invest in something like Sonicu.”

He loves the fact that he can pull out his Sonicu mobile app and see exactly where the temperatures are across his entire district.

“I’m always nervous when anything approaches 43 degrees, as that’s where bacteria start to grow,” he said. “Having all of my team with the app and knowing we have so many eyes on our aging freezers makes me so much more confident we’re not near that line.”

The cost-conscious student nutrition director turned to his Group Purchasing Organization, HPS, for help in identifying a temperature monitoring provider.

HPS is a group purchasing organization that serves more than 4,800 members in 36 states plus the District of Columbia. 

Member-owned and operated since 1949, its core membership base is made up of organizations that have an impact on the communities they serve, from hospitals to senior living facilities to schools and camps.

“I already had two other (temperature monitoring) systems I was looking at and wanted to make sure I was getting the best price and a technology that had already been vetted.”

He ultimately selected Sonicu thanks to our relationship with HPS, as well as the ability to scale with additional monitoring applications.

Dozens of HPS members rely on Sonicu monitoring in their kitchens today.

The HPS members enjoy special discounted pricing and the knowledge that their food safety technology has been vetted and approved by one of the most trusted GPOs in the student nutrition industry.

The student nutrition director said door open monitoring for his fridge and freezer doors, as well as water leak monitoring, would be natural additions to his current slate of monitoring.

Sonicu provides a comprehensive portfolio of both regulatory monitoring and facility monitoring, including water leak detection as well as door open monitoring.  

Schools across the country are adding door-open monitoring to their temperature monitoring systems to more intelligently respond to temperature excursions by knowing immediately if it’s a door open or a true mechanical malfunction causing the excursion.

Selecting and installing his wireless monitoring solution

The Ohio student nutrition director said the HPS seal of approval and Sonicu’s simple technology checked two of the four boxes he considered critical to selecting a system.

Price and his comfort with the people behind the technology were also significant criteria.

“The sales process was very natural and not intimidating, and I was confident I was getting strong technology at a fair price with our HPS relationship,” he said.

“My (product specialist) rep was easy to work with and always got back to me in a timely manner, so I felt I was working with reputable people who would take care of our team in this relationship.”

He invested in Sonicu’s most popular monitoring system for schools and commercial kitchens: The S-Series sensors and hub.

Each kitchen is equipped with a hub that communicates to AWS Cloud storage via Ethernet and can even use cellular for backup.

Each hub can communicate with up to 500 sensors, making it easy to expand beyond the core temperature monitoring solution to include water leak and door open alerts.

The S-Series temperature sensors resemble hockey pucks and can be zip-tied to virtually anything inside the freezer, while the SoniCloud mobile app installation wizard provides a step-by-step installation and configuration guide.

“Once we walked through one building and set it up, once it made sense,” he explained. “It was super simple with the app and the pucks.”

He relied on the Indiana-based support team to work through a small installation challenge and then spent an hour with the training team to get up and running with the software and mobile app.

“There was one hiccup we ran into, and we fixed it within minutes,” he said.

“The software introduction and final training went well. The team did a fantastic job of making it easy on me.”

With the system ready to serve his team this school year, he’s excited to take advantage of the compliance automation feature so he’s always ready when the inevitable visit from the county health department occurs.

“We ask our cooks to do so much, so it’s a relief to know they don’t have to keep those temperature logs anymore,” he said.

“Everyone will have the app on their phones, and we have the alarms built so my maintenance team can get them for all the freezers.”

“We’re finally in a good place to not have these giant losses from temperature issues.”