Posted by on Sep 18, 2017 in Business | 0 questions

For businesses that work in the food industry, what you sell is what your profit is made of; in other words, how attractive your food products are will define your financial growth at the end of the day. Unfortunately, too many businesses take a literal approach to profitable food. They engage on a selling mission to maximize profit. Except that there’s a negative side to a produce-to-sell strategy: The quality of your product drops dramatically.

At first, from a business perspective, it might seem like a case of positive ROI. You invest less in the product or the production but, as long as you sell, you’re generating higher profit rates than ever before. Unfortunately, while this strategy works well in theory, there is too much room for unsatisfactory products in practice. And when customers are not satisfied, they don’t buy, and your ROI drops. Here’s another way to look at your ROI in relation to food hygiene and to understand the many implications of unhealthy decisions in the food industry.

Fancy a hygienic sandwich?

The horror story of poor food hygiene

The newspapers are full of stories of food gone wrong, from the many rumors – founded or not – about the beef burgers from fast food restaurants not using beef meat but any other cheap animal versions from rats to stray cats, to finding a tropical spider in your bag of bananas. There are even stories of customers planting fake items into their food so that they could complain and claim compensation. But in the midst of the food horror stories, there are some serious facts that need to be taken into consideration. When a company doesn’t value the quality of its products, then customers can get a rather nasty surprise. That’s what happened to a passenger on a Qantas flight

who found a hypodermic needle in his in-flight meal. The passenger suffered from post-traumatic stress and depression as a result of almost swallowing the needle as he ate his meal. For the company, the consequences can be severe, from being sued to compensate their passenger to suffering from a loss of confidence from future passengers who will fly with their competitors instead. That’s exactly why you need to look after your food as a way of protecting your company.

#1. Source quality ingredients

At the start of the food journey, there’s the need to source quality ingredients. Naturally, this is a costly deal, and several companies in the food industry might find that quality ingredients increase their production costs considerably. But they also reduce the risk of customers finding unexpected items on their plates. Additionally, if you choose to buy local ingredients primarily, you can justify recovering your sourcing costs by increasing your food price within reasonable amounts. Customers are indeed more likely to want to buy a more expensive product if it is produced with local and organic ingredients.

#2. Get the right equipment

If your company manufactures food items, from ready meals to biscuits, you know that you need to invest in high-end industrial equipment to transport the ingredients from one station to another throughout the process; in other words, you need quality conveyor belts. Conveyor belts, like these https://www.goughecon.com/product-details/belt-conveyors/, can help to reduce the risks of microbacterial contamination during the production. They not only help to keep your ingredients clean and separated, but they can also come with a custom-made decontaminant feature that is used for the food and the medical industries. The inconvenience of high-end industrial equipment is the price. But it keeps your products safe for consumption.

The conveyor belts in the Krispy Kreme factory

#3. Maximize storage hygiene

Ingredients need to be transported safely and according to the FDA’s sanitation guidelines. Additionally, you need to provide separate storage facilities for each ingredient type and to keep them at the optimal temperature at all time before production. Storage conditions are regularly inspected by experts as a guarantee for your end customers. In other words, you need to put hygiene at the top of your to-do list.

#4. Get your team H&S trained

In the food industry more than in any other businesses, you need to train your team to the H&S regulations in place. In large industrial sites, effective food hygiene is synonymous with complex machinery and potential risks of misuse for your staff. Misusing the equipment can cause serious troubles, not only for your team but also for the quality of your production. Additionally, you need to implement strict rules of hygiene for your team to follow.

#5. Have quality standards

Your promise, as a food business, is to produce food that is hygienically healthy – as opposed to healthy food, which refers to the nutritional qualities of the food – and tasty for your customers. Therefore you need to ensure efficient quality controls for your food sector. These quality controls naturally check the safety but also the quality of your food. Nutritional tests review the moisture content, pH level and cholesterol factors of your products, along with the nutritional content for labeling. There’s no point keeping your production chain hygienic if you lose the taste in the end!

#6. Replace waste management by charity

Food surplus produces waste. For most companies, the unused or unsold products are counted as negative ROI. If you struggle with waste management, you should take inspiration from a British supermarket brand that has decided to transform its food waste into charity donation. The result? The costs of production are transferred into brand reputation management, while they help those who need it most.

#7. Have an emergency solution

Power cut, flooding or frozen pipes, the weather has more than one way to interfere with your business plans. That’s why you need to have an emergency power solution, such as http://www.petersonpower.com/applications/emergency-power to avoid spoiling your stock and your products when the external conditions are unfavorable. What are your priorities for an emergency power solution? Everything that keeps in the fridge and the freezer at first. Otherwise, you will need to get rid of your entire stock.

If you only consider the cost of production vs. the selling price, you will soon find out that food hygiene has got a negative ROI. However, factors such as customer retention, brand reputation, and business values are connected to your food hygiene strategy and help to grow your business.