How to get evidence of pests before an inspection

The fear is rational. A single failed environmental-health inspection can close a food business on the spot (that's from the UK Food Standards Agency's own enforcement guidance), and the inspector doesn't need to see a mouse. Droppings along a wall, gnawed packaging or smear marks behind a fridge are enough, and they appear overnight, in a kitchen that looked spotless when you locked up.

Where pests show up first

• Floor edges and skirting, especially behind and under equipment, where the warmth of a motor makes a comfortable run
• The dry store: along shelving, behind the lowest shelf, in the gap where the flour bags sit
• The bin area and the back door, which is usually how they get in; a delivery door propped open in summer is an invitation
• Anywhere food waste collects: under prep benches, behind the fryer, around drains

The part that matters is timing. Pests are most active at night, when the kitchen is dark, quiet and warm and nothing disturbs them. A daytime walk-through finds the traces, which is exactly what the inspector finds too. If you want to know what's actually happening, someone has to watch the empty kitchen through the night, and nobody's paying a person to do that.

Watch the kitchen overnight instead

This is what the Pest Watch check is for. Point a camera at the risk areas and Svid reads frames from it through the night, flagging a rodent, a bird indoors or visible insect activity. It looks where an inspector would look: floor edges, under equipment, along shelving. Small fast animals usually show up as a blur near the floor, and it flags those too. Every alert carries a timestamp and a description of what was seen and where, and the night's footage is searchable with your morning coffee.

1. 01

   Pick the risk areas

   Walk the site and choose the two or three spots where evidence would appear: the dry store, the bin area by the back door, the floor behind the line. You're covering the likely runs, not every corner.

2. 02

   Put a camera on each spot

   An RTSP camera already on the wall works; Svid captures the feed on our side, no new hardware. No camera in the dry store? A spare phone on a shelf does the job: sign in on the device, open app.svid.ai/live.html and point it at the floor. Exported files from an existing recorder can be uploaded too.

3. 03

   Turn on Pest Watch

   Create an account at app.svid.ai. Onboarding asks four questions, suggests checks and a watch level, and shows the price with its whole derivation (based on your own usage, minimum $9 a month) before Stripe checkout. In the Store, Pest Watch is priced as the extra it adds at your own usage.

4. 04

   Read the results each morning

   Alerts land on screen or by email, one per event; the same check re-firing within two minutes counts as the event continuing, not a new alarm. Search the night's footage in the Library, which covers the folder you're in and its subfolders, to see what happened around each flag.

What to do with what you find

If something fired, you now have what a pest controller rarely gets: timestamps, a location and probably an entry point. 'Rodent along the back wall at 2:10am, three nights running' is a much better brief than a photo of droppings, and it tells you which gap to proof first. Keep the dated alerts and footage for your own records as well; being able to show when a problem appeared and what you did next is the kind of paperwork you want to be holding when the EHO visits. If nothing fired, you've learnt something too, though a quiet camera isn't a certificate. It means nothing was flagged where you were watching.

Will it tell me what kind of pest it is?

It describes what it sees and where: a rodent near the floor, a bird indoors, insects on a food surface. Fast small animals often appear as a blur low in the frame, and those get flagged and described too. The timestamp and footage come with every alert, so you can always look for yourself.

Does a quiet week mean I'll pass the inspection?

No, and we won't pretend otherwise. It means no activity was flagged on the areas you watched, which is worth knowing and worth keeping. Inspectors look at proofing, cleaning and records as well; the camera covers one specific gap, the hours when nobody's there.

Do I need special cameras?

No. Svid reads an RTSP feed from an IP camera (captured on our side), uploaded files, a video URL, or a live phone camera at app.svid.ai/live.html once you've signed in on the device. If it produces footage, it can be read.

Is this pest control?

No. Svid gathers the evidence; a pest controller does the treatment. What you hand them is better information: when the activity happens, where it enters, which areas stayed clear. The proofing and the treatment plan are still their job.

What does it cost?

The monthly price is based on your own usage for your cameras, with a $9 minimum, shown with its full derivation before you pay. Pest Watch is priced in the Store from your own usage, and motion gating means a still kitchen at 3am generates almost no AI calls.