The Untold Secret Of Google’s New App For Restaurant Food Safety
Food safety is always a concern for restaurant operators. Simply put, you won’t be getting any repeat business if your customers are contracting salmonella or E. coli—food-borne diseases—after eating in your restaurant.
It might hurt your business, but consumer safety is what Google hopes to achieve with its latest project.
How does Google, a search engine company, plan to accomplish this?
It’s easy. Google has already launched a similar application called Flu Trends. Flu Trends works by tracking relevant search queries like “flu medication” or “flu symptoms” and identifies them by geographical area. Nowadays people search the internet first before going to the doctor. Google hopes this new trend would help cement the significance of its new application by identifying outbreaks even before local hospitals could report them.
The new project for restaurants is similar to Flu Trends. But instead of flu-related searches, the new project will look for food illnesses-related searches.
Google is confident their new project could identify food poisoning outbreaks 7 to 10 days faster than CDC’s (or Center for Disease Control) current system. I’m amazed at what search engine technology could do these days.
But as a restaurant owner, you ought to be a little hesitant to praise this new development. I personally see it as a double-edged sword.
Sure, we all want what’s best for our customers. But what if Google, with this overwhelming amount of data in their hands, starts naming names and points out restaurants whose customers are getting sick all of a sudden? Knowing Google’s popularity, those restaurants would be six feet under in a mere couple days. Seven or ten days later CDC’s official statement would come out, freeing the restaurant of any responsibility for the outbreak, but it is simply too late.
An ambitious project like Google’s could make or break someone’s good prospects. It’s useful, but something’s only truly useful if we make good use of it.
I hate to end an article on a sad note. The project is still in the works though, and I’m interested to see how it will start affecting local restaurants in the months to come.