PRINCETON, N.J. -- Heartland Payment Systems Inc., one of the nation's largest payments processors and leading provider of merchant business solutions, has launched SmartLink Food Safety Monitoring, an advanced, single-point solution for monitoring of food storage and preparation equipment for the convenience store industry.
For c-store operators, SmartLink Food Safety Monitoring is a cloud-based temperature monitoring solution that ensures greater efficiencies, more control over the quality and freshness of food being served and access to detailed reports to help protect food quality for their customers and their business while meeting Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points (HACCP) guidelines.
"Convenience stores currently employ one of two monitoring methods--manual monitoring by employees or use of controls that are part of larger HVAC systems--neither of which is 100% reliable. Both approaches easily lend themselves to mistakes, misreporting and compliance problems," said Michael Youngkin, Heartland's senior director of network solutions. "With the SmartLink Food Safety Monitoring solution, operators will now have simple cloud-based access to the most accurate information possible. SmartLink Food Safety Monitoring ensures food safety and quality, as well as significant savings in equipment repair and energy usage."
Through continuous monitoring and recording of cold storage and preparation equipment, operators can analyze performance to identify degrading equipment before a complete failure occurs, thus saving thousands of dollars in inventory and emergency service calls. Additionally, as cold storage and preparation equipment typically accounts for at least 30% of a convenience store's energy costs, the continuous temperature monitoring enables operators to better maintain safe temperatures using as little energy as possible.
In addition to consistent, 24/7 reporting and the ability to proactively maintain equipment to predict and prevent failure before it occurs, another major benefit of the SmartLink Food Safety Monitoring solution is ensuring compliance with the Food Modernization Act of 2011. The law calls for a number of provisions, including more frequent inspections and a requirement that food facilities have a written plan outlining possible problem areas and steps the facility would take to prevent these issues. With the SmartLink Food Safety Monitoring solution, convenience store operators have immediate access to reliable data regarding the storage and preparation equipment temperatures whenever that information is required.
Overall, Heartland's SmartLink solution is a secure managed network service, with PCI-compliant network security, that effectively supports transaction data and back-office systems. SmartLink's cloud-based Managed Network Tools provide operators with monitored VPN communications for automatic tank gauges, in-store environmental control systems, back-office systems, digital signs, email and Internet access. It also provides a distributed and segmented SSL network to support transactions generated by point-of-sale (POS), money order, check cashing, ATM and fleet card terminals.
The SmartLink Food Safety Monitoring solution can be integrated into the entire SmartLink solution or installed on its own.
Heartland SmartLink is the only payment processor-provided managed network that is a PCI-certified service provider on the Visa global registry, the company said.
Heartland Payment Systems is one of the leading payments processors in the c-store and petroleum industry, with nearly 50,000 petroleum and c-stores using Heartland's comprehensive suite of products and services, including credit card processing, marketing solutions, payroll services and SmartLink, which has more than 16,000 installations nationwide. It delivers credit, debit and prepaid card processing, mobile commerce, eCommerce, marketing solutions, security technology, payroll solutions and related business solutions and services to more than 250,000 business and educational locations nationwide.
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