The Akshaya Patra Foundation has been nourishing the children of Bhilai since 2009. The large kitchen facility is situated in a radius of 9000 sq. ft. and was inaugurated in January 2009 by Dr. Raman Singh, Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh. This kitchen is an ISO 22000:2005 certified 5S, GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) standard centralised kitchen.
Schools
Students
Rice per Day
Dal per Day
The freshness of the raw materials is retained by different methods such as:
The huge cauldrons, dal tanks and other kitchen utensils are first washed in warm water to remove soiled particles, sterilised in hot water, scrubbed with sanitiser and then cleaned in hot water for complete cleanliness.
The measures taken for maintaining the quality of food are:
Solid wastes are used to prepare fertilizers, preventing their flow through municipal pipelines
The measures adopted for food safety are:
The kitchen follows a standard Food Safety Management System; and
Conducting Internal Audit, MRM and Mock Recall strategies
Quality assurance is implemented in the all the three stages: pre-production, production and post-production
During pre-production, cleanliness of the kitchen and equipment's, inspection as well as rejection of raw materials, preventive maintenance, and chlorination of vegetables is done.
During production, personal hygiene of the workers comes first. Those having infectious diseases are not allowed, tobacco chewing or eating inside the kitchen, touching raw materials and cooked food with bare hands are prohibited. The vegetables and lentils are cleaned thrice before cooking. Maintaining critical control points and regular cleaning of floor is a must.
During the post production process, steam sterilisation of the 304 stainless steel vessels, labelling the lids with batch number and quantity, monitoring the cleanliness of the delivery vans before loading the food, temperature monitoring of meals in schools, school inspection and also feedback forms are provided to the schools.
Raw materials are procured from approved suppliers who provide the COA and Form E Certificates. For analysis, the raw materials are sent to Ahmedabad food lab and also to the NABL accredited lab.
Supplier Selection, Supplier Qualification, and Supplier Ratings
Supplier Selection: First, the supplier of a raw material is selected who qualifies the supplier audit approval.
Supplier Qualification: If all the necessary documents like ISO certificate, Agmark Certificate, Test reports, COA, Cost index, delivery performance, and quality of product are available with the supplier then the supplier is qualified.
Supplier rating: It is done on four parameters mainly food safety index, quality index, cost reduction index, and on-time delivery.
Several kaizen initiatives were adopted for continuous improvement in the kitchen. Some of the initiatives are:
The recipes are standardised as per the feedback received from the schools. A separate food safety and quality team tastes every item and separate samples are kept aside.