Food Alert is a well-established UK food safety consultancy with a digital platform — FoodCheck. Their model combines human food safety experts with software. CompliChef is software-only: self-service, transparent pricing, and designed for food business owners who want to manage compliance themselves without paying for consultants they may not need.
Neither model is wrong. The question is which one matches your business.
This isn't just a feature comparison — it's two different philosophies about how food safety should work. Understanding the model is more useful than comparing feature lists.
Food Alert's core proposition is human expertise. They deploy food safety consultants to client sites — visiting, auditing, advising, and helping businesses build and maintain their compliance systems. FoodCheck, their digital platform, supports this service.
This model works well for businesses that either lack the internal food safety knowledge to set up a HACCP system independently, have had compliance issues they need expert guidance to resolve, or operate at a complexity level where a dedicated food safety professional adds genuine value.
The natural consequence is cost. When a significant part of your service is sending qualified consultants to client sites, the pricing reflects that. This makes Food Alert appropriate for mid-to-large operators — pub chains, restaurant groups, businesses with a compliance function that justify the investment.
CompliChef is built on the premise that a well-designed digital system — combined with the FSA's own SFBB guidance — is sufficient for most UK food businesses to achieve and maintain full compliance themselves. No consultants needed, no site visits, no ongoing advisory engagement.
The platform is structured around the same framework EHOs use to assess food businesses. A chef-owner in their first restaurant and a seasoned kitchen manager at a large care home both understand the menus, the processes, and the risks in their kitchen. CompliChef provides the structure, the reminders, and the audit trail. The knowledge is already there.
This makes CompliChef significantly more accessible. From £29/month, any food business can have a fully digital compliance system running the same day they sign up.
Food Alert does not publish pricing. Their model involves a consultancy engagement — costs vary based on number of sites, frequency of visits, scope of work, and contract terms. For businesses that genuinely need on-site expert advice and audit support, this investment can represent real value.
However, for a two-person café or a small pub kitchen that mainly needs a reliable system for logging daily temperatures and keeping clean HACCP records — the consultancy overhead may be significantly more than the compliance problem actually requires.
CompliChef publishes its pricing: single site from £29/month, growing restaurant groups from £149/month, multi-site operators from £699/month. No setup fees, no implementation charges, no annual contract required.
A 14-day free trial gives full access to everything — KitchenPortal, StaffPortal, Labels — before you commit. Most businesses recover the subscription cost in time savings within the first week.
For an independent food business, this means professional-grade digital compliance for less than the cost of a takeaway meal per day.
FoodCheck is Food Alert's digital compliance platform — covering food safety records, temperature logs, checklists, and HACCP documentation. As the digital layer of a consultancy service, its primary purpose is capturing and storing compliance records that Food Alert consultants can review and access.
It is a solid food safety management tool positioned within a broader consultancy relationship. Beyond food safety records, the platform does not extend into staff management, allergen labelling, or recruitment — these are separate operational areas outside Food Alert's core focus.
CompliChef covers kitchen compliance through KitchenPortal — temperature logs, cooldown records, hot holding, HACCP, cleaning, allergen management, probe calibration, EHO Access mode. And then it goes further.
StaffPortal handles rota management, HR records, training tracking, and payroll reporting — replacing the need for a separate HR platform. Labels handles Natasha's Law compliant allergen and use-by labelling, printing directly from a Sunmi device connected to your menu data. RecruitPortal connects with hospitality jobseekers. One subscription, one platform, one login.
For a food business that needs to manage staff as well as compliance records, this integration is genuinely useful — and means not paying for multiple separate tools.
You pay for software, not for someone to visit your kitchen. At £29/month, CompliChef covers everything you need for digital compliance without a consultant in the loop.
Self-service setup takes under an hour. No onboarding call, no needs assessment, no implementation timeline. Your team can be logging records on the same day you sign up.
StaffPortal — rota, HR, training records — is part of your subscription. One fewer system to pay for and manage.
Allergen and use-by labels printed on demand, directly connected to your menu data. Compliant, accurate, and takes seconds per item.
iOS and Android apps with offline mode. 15-second temperature logs. Bluetooth fridge sensor auto-fill. Designed for kitchens where Wi-Fi drops and service is relentless.
One click gives an EHO inspector read-only, date-filtered access to your entire compliance history. No printing, no folder searching, no stress during a visit.
There are businesses for which a consultancy-led approach adds real value — and we'd rather say so than overstate the case.
For most independent food businesses, a well-structured digital system is all you need. The FSA's own guidance — Safer Food Better Business — is designed for businesses to implement themselves. CompliChef is built around that principle.
14-day free trial. No credit card. No sales call. Full access from minute one.