Food quality is the quality characteristics of food that is acceptable to consumers. This includes external factors as appearance (size, shape, color, gloss, and consistency), texture, and flavor.

Food quality is an important food manufacturing requirement, because food consumers are susceptible to any form of contamination that may occur during the manufacturing process. Many consumers also rely on manufacturing and processing standards, particularly to know what ingredients are present, due to dietary, nutritional requirements (halal, vegetarian), or medical conditions (diabetes or allergies).

Besides ingredient quality, there are also sanitation requirements. It is important to ensure that the food processing environment is as clean as possible in order to produce the safest possible food for the consumer. Food quality also deals with product traceability and labeling issues to ensure there is correct ingredient and nutritional information.

Absolute safety in food quality, freshness and delivery is the bedrock commitment of Epicurean 21. This commitment is executed through diligent execution of the company’s Hazard Analysis at Critical Control Points (HACCP) action plan. Because of the unique business plan of Epicurean 21, the company controls the entire production, delivery chain of each food delivered. No other food company exercises this level of control. Because Epicurean 21 exercises control from the soil to the plate, HACCP can be executed and verified for the entire production, delivery chain. Also, this control allows for each food to be source and process verified. Epicurean 21 practices complete transparency with its customers, so that each customer can rest assured that each food is safe and wholesome.

Epicurean 21 executes HACCP as a systematic approach to the identification, evaluation, and control of food safety hazards.

The company executes HACCP through vigilant adherence to Standard Operating Procedures based on seven principles:

1. Conduction of hazard analyses
2. Determination of critical control points (CCPs)
3. Establishment of critical limits at each CCP
4. Establishment of monitoring procedures for each critical limit
5. Establishment of corrective actions as needed
6. Establishment of verification procedures
7. Establishment of record-keeping and documentation procedures

Through contracts early in the process, Epicurean 21 assures quality and safety control through implementation of its hazard and quality analysis at critical control points (HACCP and QACCP respectively), policies. These policies achieve an increase in stringency over time providing the company progressive controls over the production/delivery process, which results in a stream of food products that increasingly deliver to its customers, consistently. Through this process, a survey of each market is under-taken as to food products quality characteristics deemed important. These surveys receive analysis as to the uniformity of the market in terms of the satisfaction achieved in order to determine significant fractionation patterns in the market. These quality characteristics conducive to satisfying eating experiences receive translation into food product specifications providing comprehensive descriptions of desired products. These descriptions are available for use to delineate the critical control points and define the essential, threshold activities necessary at the critical control points to assure that the food products consistently exceed market desires. Epicurean 21 considers all characteristics deemed important by each discrete market to be of penultimate importance and configures each production system to insure consistent delivery of foods characterized by these characteristics.

Training Builds Excellence

Our employees are at the frontlines of our quality controls, which is why we invest heavily in training and personal development for our team. Thanks to our unique combination of onboarding instruction, shift change meetings, and professionally developed training on the floor and at workstations, our employees communicate better and can work to a higher standard of excellence in quality, safety, and efficiency.