Temperature control is critical in restaurant kitchens. A good way to keep track of food quality and safety would be to have all product temperatures digitally tied into the restaurant's POS server.

Anti-theft stickers in department stores are made by printing simple circuit boards onto pieces of flexible plastic. These small circuits are actually powered by the radio waves that are sent from the anti-theft scanner.

I propose stickers made in a similar way, but with some key differences. Each sticker would have printed into it a small temperature probe. Each sticker would also have a unique serial number. Stickers could be assigned by the computer system to product pans, and they would be programmed into the system either via a small antenna device or a dispenser. The employee would place the sticker into a pan of product or sauce. Antennas mounted in strategic places in the kitchen would power the temperature probe squares and report product temperature data to the POS server. Software could then do a number of useful things with that data.
-- fogfreak, Feb 05 2009

Waiter, there's RFID in my soup! [+]
-- loonquawl, Feb 05 2009


I don't think I want my food tagged in this way. Nevertheless there's a number of things that commercial food processing does that I don't like, but as I don't see them I don't mind so much. [+]
-- wagster, Feb 05 2009


Add a tiny bit of RAM and a realtime clock (even a simple counter) to the device and it can keep a timed log of the temperatures to which it's been exposed. Even if it's cold enough today, doesn't mean it wasn't sitting in an uninsulated delivery van for hours yesterday*. One swipe with an RFID reader and you'll know for sure.

*By the way, it was 46.4C (112F) here yesterday - the hottest day since records began in 1850
-- BunsenHoneydew, Feb 08 2009


"And so Springfield's heat wave continues, with today's temperature exceeding the record for this date, set way back four billion years ago, when the earth was just a ball of molten lava!" -- Kent Brockman, The Simpsons
-- Spacecoyote, Feb 08 2009



halfbakery