How The BE-Hive Eliminated Daily Temperature Headaches with IoT Sensors for Food Safety

When manual temperature checks were eating up precious production time, The BE-Hive found a smart solution for their busy vegan food production facility with IoT Sensors for Food Safety powered by Icicle ERP and ES Canada.

Meet The BE-Hive: Purveyors of Dope Plant Food

The BE-Hive started out in the food industry the way all the best companies do: they were overwhelmingly popular in their Nashville, Tennessee community for hosting amazing vegan potlucks and slowly but surely developed a stellar, plant-based product line and a strong business.

Coming up the old-fashioned way with their game-changing food products, The BE-Hive’s team are experts at transforming challenges into opportunities, even a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic – which began just after they had signed a lease for a new 7,500 sq. ft. facility. Their signature ingenuity led to a wildly successful to-go window deli. The next year, they doubled the size of their space to keep up with the demand for their delicious plant-based meat and cheese products.

Since they opened their first facility in 2016, The BE-Hive has developed a robust business, mainly selling their vegan meat and cheese products – like pepperoni (including a Nashville hot pepperoni line), bacon, chipotle chorizo, deli slices, taco meat, roast beef, and more – to restaurants in bulk. They take pride in using simple ingredients like seitan, creating easy to make and use products, and serving up healthy, sustainable foods.

While they had nailed their recipes, they still had the drive to improve their production processes to make sure that their food was consistently high-quality and sustainably made. And they had one particular challenge in mind to solve…

The Challenge: Plant-Based Products Need Constant Temperature and Humidity Control

Picture this: You’re running a busy vegan food production facility. Your pepperoni and cheese alternatives are flying off the shelves, but your quality assurance manager is spending way too much time walking around with a temperature gun.
That’s exactly where The BE-Hive found themselves. Their temperature monitoring process was a manual slough that didn’t come close to matching the innovation and creativity of their products.

Johnny Benbow, their Quality Assurance Manager, was making the trek across 1,600 sq. ft. of the facility, from upstairs to downstairs, from one side of the building to another, just to get opening and closing temperature checks. The routine was eating up valuable time—about 5-10 minutes per cycle—across three freezers, three refrigerators, plus all the room temperature zones in their basement and shipping areas. And that’s not counting the time to change shoes, input data, and get back to actual production work.

What made this challenge so significant to The BE-Hive is that vegan meat alternatives are finicky; humidity can make or break a production run. They didn’t just need relief for workers, they needed to take their temperature control systems to the next level to ensure product quality as their business grew.

The Solution: IoT Sensors for Food Safety

When Johnny searched for a solution to integrate temperature monitoring into their operations, their existing Icicle food safety software offered just what they needed: a simple and seamless IoT sensor integration from a software company that paired well with their own no-BS approach.

“The initial pilot experience was easy on my end,” Johnny explained. He walked the Icicle support team through what The BE-Hive needed, discussed the options on the table, and everything was set up on the backend for a quick, painless installation. With Icicle’s extensive integration and data-management capabilities, they were able to install sensors from ES Canada that tracked both temperature and humidity – eliminating the need to coordinate with multiple suppliers.

“The fact that the same sensors can also read humidity levels was an interesting add-on for me. Rather than have to go and get a different company to do certain things – the fact that Icicle has so many different capabilities to meet our needs was a big selling point.” – Johnny Benbow, Quality Assurance Manager for The BE-Hive

Since their team already used Icicle ERP for food safety, quality control, and production management, there was no need to train staff on new systems. Plus, the solution came in more affordable than competing alternatives they’d researched – always a win for growing manufacturers.

Here’s what changed immediately: Real-time temperature and humidity data became available from any computer in the facility. The sensors ping every 10 minutes, feeding data directly into the Icicle platform they already knew and trusted. Critical alerts get sent via text when temperatures go out of range, and all the historical data is searchable for compliance and trend analysis.

“Since we’ve implemented the sensors, it takes no time at all to check the logs, even if you just have a suspicion that it’s a little too hot today and wonder what the downstairs freezer is looking like. Without having to go [and check it manually], you can just pull up Icicle and just figure it out on the spot.” – Johnny Benbow

Now, The BE-Hive can see humidity trends and adjust production schedules accordingly. No more guessing, no more inconsistent batches: just safe, quality food.

The Results: Production Efficiency, Data Visibility, and Peace of Mind

The numbers speak for themselves. Johnny’s team saves at least 10 minutes per monitoring cycle—time that’s now spent on actual production instead of temperature hunting.

But the real win? Peace of mind. Now when there’s a suspicion that something might be off temperature-wise, there’s no need to suit up and hike across the facility. The BE-Hive team can just pull up Icicle and gain instant visibility into real-time processes and quality control metrics. As Johnny put it, checking freezer temperatures was “just another thing to take away a member of management for a while, and now this can be done at any computer in the facility.”

The operational improvements go beyond time savings and management focus. With real-time visibility into all temperature zones, The BE-Hive can correlate humidity with product quality and use environmental data to optimize production schedules. Quality control shifted from periodic spot-checks to continuous monitoring with immediate alerts for any temperature excursions.

“The search feature for the logs is probably one of my easiest things to save me from hassles in my job,” Johnny elaborated. With just a few clicks or taps in Icicle, he can hone in on specific time and date ranges and review sensor logs showing automated measurements every 10 minutes.

Integrating IoT Sensors is Easy with Icicle ERP

The BE-Hive’s story shows what’s possible when you stop accepting “that’s just how we’ve always done it” as an answer. Even small-scale manufacturers can leverage smart technology to streamline operations while maintaining the highest food safety standards.

Partnering with Icicle helped The BE-Hive operate according to their values and at the high standard they hold themselves to. Johnny shared advice for other manufacturers looking for solutions:

“If you’re looking for a digital platform to hold everything as far as food safety documents, checks, production runs, etc. – as somebody who’s been with the company before we had Icicle and did everything on paper and trying to be a company that preaches sustainability, it seemed like a no-brainer for us to switch to an all-digital database that has everything. And the tech support from Icicle is very friendly and very quick to respond with suggestions or help.” – Johnny Benbow

For food manufacturers still doing manual temperature monitoring, IoT sensors integrated with your food safety platform deliver immediate ROI through dramatic time savings in daily operations, enhanced food safety compliance, real-time visibility into critical control points, and improved production planning and quality control.

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