True Essence Foods built a smarter path to SQF in Short Time.
True Essence Foods is an Indianapolis-based food technology company rethinking how food and beverage manufacturers protect flavor, improve product quality, and reduce environmental impact. Its proprietary technologies are designed to solve some of the food industry’s most challenging processing problems.
Flavor Balancing™ selectively removes undesirable flavor compounds from products such as spirits, wine, coffee, and chocolate without relying on additives or preservatives. Flavor Symmetry™ takes a different approach to preservation by removing water from fresh foods without heat or high pressure, helping protect flavor, aroma, color, and nutritional value while creating shelf-stable products.
The company’s technologies are used across categories including chocolate, herbs and spices, coffee, fruits and vegetables, juice concentrates, fermented beverages, cannabis, spirits, and wine.
As True Essence Foods continued to innovate and grow, its food safety systems needed to evolve with the business. The company aimed to achieve SQF certification on a strict timeline while building a food safety program that was adaptable, mobile, traceable, and easy for employees to use.
FoodReady helped build that infrastructure with Preventive Control plans, SOPs, digital checklists, environmental monitoring, task management, document control, and traceability. The result was a scalable food safety system that supported True Essence Foods on its successful path to SQF certification.
A food safety system built to keep pace with innovation.
SQF Certified
Food safety systems developed and implemented
Traceability
Historical records made
Lower Staffing Needs
Digital document monitoring helped delay
1/3 of Staff
Approximately one-third of operations staff used
Preventive Control plans
Digital checklists
Environmental monitoring
Task management
A fast-growing food technology company needed food safety to move just as fast.
True Essence Foods was developing technology for industries ranging from chocolate and herbs to beverages, fruits, spices, and other ingredients. As the company’s applications expanded, so did the complexity of its food safety program. QA Manager Amanda Turner was tasked with finding a software platform that could help True Essence achieve SQF certification within a demanding timeline, while providing more than just a place to store food safety documentation.
The platform needed to support a growing operation across multiple ingredient and process categories, including Preventive Control plans, SOPs, recall documentation, environmental monitoring, sanitation and maintenance activities, employee verification, historical record retrieval, traceability, recurring tasks, and mobile data collection. After evaluating several software providers, True Essence selected FoodReady because it offered the required functionality at a workable cost while remaining flexible enough to grow with the business.
What True Essence needed
- SQF certification support - A complete food safety system aligned with a strict certification timeline
- Preventive Control plans - Plans tailored to the ingredients and processes used by the company
- Document management - One structured location for controlled food safety documentation
- Traceability - The ability to record, track, and quickly search historical data
- Flexible digital checklists - Forms that QA could modify as processes evolved
- Recurring task management - Better oversight of sanitation, maintenance, and environmental programs
- Mobile accessibility - A practical way for operations staff to complete records
- Multilingual adoption - Support for employees using Spanish in daily operations
How True Essence built its SQF-ready food safety system.
FoodReady combined software configuration, food safety consulting, employee training, and traceability integration to turn True Essence Foods' requirements into an operational food safety program.
Gap Assessment
FoodReady began by assessing True Essence Foods’ existing processes to identify missing controls, documentation gaps, and areas that needed to be strengthened before SQF certification. This assessment established a clear roadmap for building a more comprehensive food safety management system.
Document Management
FoodReady implemented a centralized document management system to support SQF preparation, replacing disconnected files and manual tracking with a structured digital environment. This made controlled documents easier to organize and maintain while giving the QA team better visibility into the procedures and records supporting the food safety program.
Preventive Control Plans, SOPs & Recall Program
FoodReady developed Preventive Control plans for ingredients produced by True Essence Foods using its HACCP planning tools, supported by SOPs, recall documentation, digital checklists, and other food safety records. Together, these materials created a stronger operational foundation for SQF readiness.
Digital Checklist Implementation
FoodReady’s Checklist Builder became one of the most valuable parts of the system, allowing QA to create and adapt checklists as processes evolved without rebuilding workflows from scratch. This flexibility was especially useful for a growing company whose procedures continued to mature. Employees were also trained to complete and verify checklists, helping make digital recordkeeping part of everyday operations.
Environmental, Sanitation & Maintenance Programs
FoodReady used its Task Manager to help True Essence manage recurring environmental monitoring, sanitation, maintenance, and verification activities. Tasks could be assigned, scheduled, tracked, and linked to the required checklists, giving QA greater visibility into whether critical food safety activities were being completed on time.
Traceability Integration
Traceability was a key requirement for True Essence Foods, so FoodReady developed a system that incorporated data from the company’s existing operational platform. This gave QA a more effective way to record, track, and search historical information, making supporting records easier to retrieve during SQF preparation.
Mobile Adoption & Employee Training
True Essence needed a food safety system that worked for operations employees as well as QA. The team adopted FoodReady’s mobile app for day-to-day food safety activities, with approximately one-third of operations staff using the Spanish-language version. While employee buy-in was initially a challenge, the platform’s usability helped make the transition easier than expected.
SQF Guidance & Certification Preparation
FoodReady consultants provided guidance and resources throughout True Essence Foods’ SQF preparation, helping bring preventive controls, SOPs, document management, digital checklists, sanitation, environmental monitoring, recurring tasks, and traceability into one connected food safety program. With this stronger system in place, True Essence successfully achieved its SQF certification goal.
What FoodReady delivered
SQF certification support
Preventive Control plans
SOP development
Recall program
Digital checklists
Document management
Traceability system
Environmental monitoring
Sanitation program
Maintenance tracking
Task management
Employee training
Better visibility, greater accountability, and less administrative overhead.
True Essence Foods built a scalable food safety system that supported its successful pursuit of SQF certification without requiring QA staffing to grow at the same pace.
FoodReady provided HACCP plans, SSOPs, pre-requisite programs, and daily checklists for items like sanitation and opening and closing procedures, alongside batch management and traceability. Eurobake now produces batch records on a daily, continuous basis.
Since implementing FoodReady's software and consulting, Eurobake has expanded its customer list dramatically and grown revenue 2× per year, turning food safety from a barrier into a growth engine.
"FoodReady has given us the ability to hold off on hiring staff that I would have needed for document monitoring."
True Essence needed flexibility, not another rigid compliance system.
For an innovation-driven company like True Essence, processes evolve quickly as products, controls, production programs, and team responsibilities change. The food safety system therefore needed to be flexible enough to adapt alongside the business.
Checklists changed with the operation
QA could quickly create or modify checklists to match changing processes without rebuilding the entire system.
Recurring tasks created accountability
Task Manager helped assign responsibilities, track progress, and connect recurring activities with the documentation needed to prove completion.
Traceability made historical data useful
True Essence could retrieve past information instead of simply collecting records and leaving them buried in files.
Mobile access increased adoption
Operations staff could complete activities directly through the mobile app, with Spanish-language support helping broaden adoption across the workforce.
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15–30 minutes. We map FoodReady to your process, plug in your real HACCP plan, and show you the auditor view before the call ends.