Is Your Restaurant/Retail Food Safety Audit Program Working?

Many of the leading restaurant/retail companies in the United States are using 3rd party food safety audits as another tool to protect their brand and their guests. In fact, food safety auditing is quickly becoming and “industry best practice”. Moreover, there are a number of reliable food-safety auditing companies, all capable of auditing the level of food safety performance. But hard the questions need to be asked: Is the food safety audit program really working? What have been the long term benefits from the audit program? Has it impacted your overall food safety and food safety awareness?
Here is a practical view point of food safety in the industry. Most, if not all restaurant/retail companies in the industry view food safety as a separate program, or silo if you will, separating food safety from all of the other aspects of the business. Unfortunately, food safety becomes a low priority facet of the business, taking a back seat to sales, guest counts, guest service, labor hours, etc. Ultimately food safety becomes one of those programs that will “take care of itself” by “doing the right thing”. However, as mentioned before, there are many companies who view food safety as a critical aspect of the business, even if it is a silo program. They take control and develop a food safety audit system, whether internally or by a service provider. The system is usually a blanket food safety audit for every unit on a regular basis – usually twice a year. As part of the audit program, the service provider will develop end of round reports highlighting the most common food safety issues, average scores based on region, etc. After several rounds of auditing, you may have discovered that nothing has really changed. You have some units that improved, and others that declined in performance. Yet the same audit is done over and over again, with the same results.
Over a period of time, the inevitable question resurfaces, especially by the operational team or the executive team – “Is the food safety audit program working”? In other words what they are really saying is, “where is the value of doing food safety audits”. The obvious answer is the reduction or elimination of suspect foodborne illness reports, regulatory enforcement actions, or simply staying out of hot water. But, has the food safety audit fostered real change and improvement? Has it identified the root causes of critical food safety issues, and most importantly, provided long term corrective actions? Most people look at the obvious results, how many critical issues you average per round or the average score per round. If there is less, then you would assume some measure of success. But what if you have only improved your score by 2% over a two year period? Does this mean the audits are working?
The answer to this question may lie with the set up of the audit program. NSF International strongly believes in the risked-based approach to food safety auditing, that takes into account all of the business aspects of the restaurant/retail operation. Instead of a blanket audit for every unit (food safety silo), develop a risk-based system focusing on the critical, higher risk units while at the same time monitoring the low risk units. Most units can be categorized into high, medium and low risk units based on many risk indicators. Some of the indicators may include the following: health department inspection scores; food costs, labor costs, employee and manager turnover to mention a few. All of these risk indicators are inter-related in the overall performance of a unit. For instance, a unit with labor issues, most likely will have sanitation issues because the manager is operating very lean, which leads to poor sanitation practices. Or, a unit may have severe food cost controls, which translates to poor quality of food and/or a lack of proper rotation. Once you have “risk assessed” your units, then the audit parameters can be tailored for each risk category. High risk units would justly receive the most attention, while the low risk units are monitored. Any shifts in performance from the monitoring, translates to a shift in the risk index – high risk unit may drop down, while low risk units go up.
By reviewing all of the critical components of the operation into a risk based performance system, you are now focused on the high and medium risk units, while monitoring the low units. The high risk units are the ones who pose largest brand protection risk. Moreover, the risk-based system is fluid with the changes in your business. It stands to reason, that from year to year, the list of high, medium and low risk units will change. With the risk-based system, it becomes fluid with your business. The benefit is you know the system is working based on the number of high, medium and low risk units. Additionally, it allows you to focus on the root causes of food safety issues, not the scores or criticals.
If you would like more information on the risk-based food safety approach, please contact NSF International!

NSF International
Business Development Manager Food Safety
865-233-2575
mloftis@nsf.org