Taj President HACCP certified
November 8, 2003

The food production processes at the Taj President has been acknowledged as HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) certified. The effort was formally started on January 16, 2002, and has taken 21 months to conclude.

Dr John M. Bryden of SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance) made a presentation to the senior management team at the Taj President on November 7, 2003. Dr Bryden, provided leads for further improvements in a few areas. Responding to the question about other hotels in India that may be HACCP certified, Dr Bryden said, “From SGS’s point of view Taj President is the first one. We are not aware of any other hotels in India that have been certified but I can’t say that with 100 per cent certainty, but we are going to check that out.” Talking about the unique approach followed by Taj President, Dr Bryden said, “What Taj President has done is that instead of trying to look at every individual recipe they have looked at food groups.” He went on to explain that conventionally one would start with recipe and ingredients and then move back into its source. At Taj President by tracing the source and by creating food groups with matrices to track, makes this a unique system and has potential of being adapted and tailored for other hotels in the Taj Group. 

The next step to improve the processes, Chef Ananda Solomon said, “It’s a continuous journey of process improvements and can only get better with ongoing effort.” Complementing the efforts of all the members of the food production department and members of all functions associated with the HACCP certification initiative, Manoj Bhatia, general manager said, “I am grateful to all of the department heads and their various teams in assisting and working towards this very important certification.” Mr Bhatia, made a special mention of the business excellence manager and stated, “Ashish and his team spent many hours in formulating the concept and then training various staff in the hotel.”