Wisdom Series · Risk
Food and Beverage Risk Management
Food and beverage risk management is the practice of identifying threats to a production facility and putting controls in place to keep the plant running safely and legally. The core tool for this work is a risk register, which tracks hazards across food safety, worker protection, equipment reliability, and compliance. Building one forces a producer to look at the operation systematically.
Brewery Compliance Risk Areas
Building a risk register
A risk register lists each risk, its likelihood, its consequence, the control in place, and an owner. You review it on a schedule. This document organizes the threats to your facility so you can assign responsibility and verify that your controls actually exist.
The seven risk areas
When building a register for a food or beverage producer, these are the main areas to cover.
- Food safety and recall: The controls here are a HACCP or food safety plan, lot traceability, and a mock recall. You can find our guide to the beverage HACCP plan.
- Regulatory compliance: This covers FDA registration, FSMA requirements, and TTB and TABC regulations for alcohol. See the regulatory checklist.
- Equipment and process failure: You control this risk through preventive maintenance on critical equipment.
- Worker safety: Hazards tend to involve CO2, caustic cleaning chemicals, and confined space in tanks. Controls include CO2 monitoring and ventilation where CO2 is present, confined space procedures, and pressure relief on vessels.
- Supply chain: The threat is usually single-source ingredients or packaging. The control is maintaining a second source for critical inputs.
- Financial: These risks involve customer concentration and cash timing.
- Insurance gaps: The control is an insurance review for product liability and recall coverage.
Send us the details
Send the products you make, the equipment you run and the risks that worry you most. A Solon engineer reads every inquiry and replies by email, usually within one business day.