Ep #242 Navigate Food Safety Requirments Like a Pro with Scott Roi

If you've ever laid awake worrying about getting someone sick from your product or if you are doing things correctly to not be sued, this episode is for you. 

I sat down with my go-to food safety expert Scott Roi, and he makes this “unsexy” topic feel doable and even empowering.

We break down what you actually need to be food safety compliant at different stages of business and you might be surprised at what you do, or don't need. 

Whether you're at farmers markets, selling nationally online, or about to pitch to Whole Foods, this is the episode to keep in your toolkit.

Hit play, take notes, and let’s make food safety one less thing keeping you up at night. If you need Scott's services, email him at scott@fss-llc.com and be sure to tell him you heard our interview on Food Business success!

PS - Scott is our Fuel VIP guest in May - if you've been on the fence about joining a program from Food Business Success, now is the time to get inside!

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Transcript

Sari  0:00  
Which sales channel should I focus on first in my food business? I've been hearing the same question for years from passionate food entrepreneurs, just like you. And the reality is, there is no cookie cutter, one size fits all answer. The right channel for you depends on your specific product with your unique benefits and challenges, your current life situation, your personality, and your business goals. Some of you will see the most success by going to farmers markets. Some of you have a product made for ecommerce, and some of you are going to do really well getting on store shelves, and some of you would benefit from having a mix of two, or even all three of those. But what's important here is that you are making the decision based on you, and not what someone else is telling you that you should do. That is why I am so excited to announce our newest live training experience. It's called the Sales Channel Challenge, and it's three days to build a roadmap for your Food Business Success. If you are an early stage entrepreneur, you're thinking about launching or you have launched into one or even two of those channels, but you're struggling to manage the overwhelm and to get traction, then this is a challenge for you. Join me April 15th through 17th for a one hour call each day, and we are going to dive into each of these sales channels so that you really understand what it's going to take to succeed, what is required of you, and whether that feels like a yes. April and I are going to help you assess and really figure out, based on facts, what is the right sales channel for you right now. And here's the best part, it's just $27 and you're going to walk away with that clear understanding of each channel and a roadmap for you. Head over to foodbizsuccess.com/challenge to secure your spot today. We are limiting the number of seats, so you don't want to put this off. Go and get your spot. Foodbizsuccess.com/challenge, I can't wait to see you there. 

Sari  2:27  
Do you lie awake in bed wondering if you are food safety compliant? Wondering what would happen if you got someone sick, and what would happen to your business if someone wanted to sue you for that? Never fear. We're not going to live in fear. We are going to get the information and on today's podcast, we are talking all things food safety with Scott Roi. Stay tuned.

Sari  2:51  
Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the packaged food industry ready to finally turn that delicious idea into reality. I'm your host, Sari Kimbell. I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach, and it's got to be fun. In this podcast, I share with you mindset tools to become a true entrepreneur and run your business like a boss, interviews with industry experts to help you understand the business you are actually in, and food founder journey so you can learn what worked and didn't work and not feel so alone in your own journey. Now let's jump in! 

Sari  3:39  
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. This is going to be a really great one, one to keep in your tool kit, your tool belt, as you develop your food business. I'm really excited to welcome Scott Roi and we are going to talk all things food safety. And I know that probably, you know that might not be the, the funnest, sexiest part of your business, but it is so, so important. So welcome, Scott, really glad you're here.

Scott  4:06  
Thank you. 

Sari  4:08  
And you have been in the Food Safety world since 1997 and we were talking before we started recording, I was like, how did you get into this? And you said you started your own ice cream shop, and then you had multiples of those. And so sounds like you just had to learn on the job, because somebody had to do it.

Scott  4:30  
That's exactly it. 

Sari  4:35  
That's amazing. I mean, a lot of people would rather outsource that, but it sounds like you had some interest in it,

Scott  4:41  
I wouldn't call it in the beginning as much interest as it was, I didn't have the budget to have somebody else come in and do it, so it was much cheaper to take the time, learn it, you know, do the coursework, get the certifications and those types of things. So it was out of necessity.

Sari  5:05  
And you have become my go to person that when someone says I need a recall plan, I need a HACC plan, I need a GMP plan, you know, whatever kind of food safety related thing, I always connect them with you. This is actually our first time meeting, and like seeing each other, because we usually just email. But you are the easiest person I found ever to work with, and you are accommodating and quick. And I think you know, not everybody is great at working with, like, early stage people who are like, I don't know what you're talking about. So thank you for being such a great resource for my clients and members.

Scott  5:56  
Oh, you're very welcome. 

Sari  5:58  
I don't even remember, how do we even got connected. I cannot remember.

Scott  6:03  
I have no idea. It was a long time ago. 

Sari  6:05  
It was but I'm grateful because finding a good food safety person that is responsive, and also I love that you're an independent so rather than going with an agency, I feel like your fees and everything are very reasonable for my clients. So appreciate that. 

Scott  6:26  
Well good, you know, my big interests, I would say, more than the food safety side, is the small business side, and helping people start up and and teach them to do, you know what I did many, many years ago is, you know, this is, I can give them the building blocks to start with in a nice package. I think I've made it for food safety anyway, fairly easy to understand, even though it still is quite an elephant to bring into the mix. But it doesn't need to be hard. There's a lot of details. You know, the food safety plan components are easy. It's executing it. It takes the work and the discipline.

Sari  7:14  
There, although some of us would very much argue about this. Maybe they're straightforward. 

Scott  7:22  
Let me give you an example here. The most important thing is to say what you do, and then do what you say. So there is no hard and fast correct or incorrect food safety plan. It's basically what you feel your risks are and what you need to do to cover those risks. So essentially, a food safety plan is a I'm going to scrub my floors once a week, and I'm going to make my employees wash their hands, done. There's my food safety plan. That is a valid food safety plan, and you're not going to get penalized as long as you do those things that you said you were going to do. Now, when an auditor, inspector, customer comes in the door, they may say, well, okay, Scott, we really need to do a little more than this, but they're not going to smack me around. This isn't good enough. And the next time we come back, we're going to want to see this, this, this, this, this, and this. So that's what I'm saying, that the food safety plan part of it isn't as hard as the execution of it. 

Sari  8:40  
Making sure, and everything done, recorded, done to the standard that you say. So let's talk about just, you know, when people are just starting out, and I know that the complication that comes in, and I've been doing this for long enough, is that it's so product dependent, right? So somebody comes to you or me with a salsa versus a cookie versus a dairy product versus a meat product or seafood, right? It gets like endless combinations of things. 

Scott  9:15  
Yes and no, it depends what part of the of food safety we're talking about, a recall plan is pretty standard across the board. You know, you could be selling shrimp, you could be doing chocolate pudding. It's going to be the same mechanisms, the same paperwork, same process. However, if we're talking about a hassa plan, yes, 100% entirely, not just product specific, but where you're getting your ingredients. For example, we know that cinnamon, coming out of Indonesia, for whatever reason, contains glass. I don't know where it comes from, but there's glass in it when you buy it in bulk. So you got to sift your cinnamon to get the chunks of glass out. Found it three times. And so depending on where your ingredient is coming from, there may be certain plant diseases that are prevalent in that area that we need to be concerned about. There may be foreign material issues. You know, raw materials coming out of China aren't always the most sanitary, so we need to be real careful about kill steps on those. So combination of, you know, the product that you're you're making, and then where you're getting your ingredients from. 

Sari  10:40  
So if I'm just and I know this does not apply to cottage food, because cottage food is like its own. It's got it, own safety, own things that it has to do. So this is we're talking about, let's start with people self producing. So they are manufacturing in a Commissary Kitchen or some kind of commercial kitchen. What are some like you already talked about a recall plan, is that required at just like the base level, like I'm selling to farmers markets, I'm selling, let's go ahead and say I'm selling across country online, and maybe I'm selling, like, regional, kind of small wholesale. So what do I need? 

Scott  11:25  
So depending on your size and who you're selling to will dictate what you need. If you're just selling to a farmer's market and direct to consumer, you don't need anything like that. There's no regulation that says you need to have a recall plan, the food safety plan, anything like that. Some municipalities say, well, you need to get a license for $25. You need to take our courses, those kinds of things. So that's all going to be local to your county or state, but at a federal level, before we get into food safety requirements from the FDA, you need to be a sizable company. I mean, for a farm, you got to sell $100,000 of the same no, it's $25,000 of the same product. So when I'm selling $25,000 of carrots, now, I have to have a food safety plan for my carrots. So you're talking about much bigger businesses to comply with FDA rules. Now, where the exception is is that you have the FDA over here, and then you have, let's say Safeway over here. Safeway is going to say, I don't care if you only sell $10 a year of this product, if you're selling to me, you're going to need to have GMPs. You're needing to have a recall plan. You might need to have a hassle plan. So industry will dictate what you need to do, but long before the FDA will. But what I do is all of my plans are FDA compliant, so that when you are a quarter million dollar company one day, you don't have to change anythin, you're already doing it. 

Sari  13:13  
Do you happen to know the limits, like, what would trigger if I was just selling direct to consumer for like, a salsa or some kind of packaged product. Do you happen to know that? 

Scott  13:27  
So a million dollars is is the limit, but you can get exceptions to that, depending on your industry. So, like I said, you got to be big. 

Sari  13:37  
So that's what I find, is people are small and they're just, they're, you know, they have their county license, their health, you know, with the health department, or the state. So they're just going along and everything's fine. But it's when they start, all sudden, they get that whole foods account, or they get, I know, I sent somebody to you that was Costco was interested in them, and, you know, they've just been like, like, you said, like, small, they're under the million, for sure. And then they're like, what I have to do?

Scott  14:20  
Yeah, and depending on the chain you're going into, you know, for example, if you're selling to Whole Foods, they have kind of a scaled down version of a food safety plan that they require you to comply with. Costco, they're looking at the full blown food safety plan with a GMP audit before they'll buy from you.

Sari  14:41  
Yeah, and I am hearing more from Whole Foods that even small brands are having to do a full audit, which is okay, like, what does an audit cost, typically?

Sari  14:56  
Sorry to interrupt this podcast, but I want to be. Sure you have got your ticket for the upcoming Sales Channel Challenge, no more wondering, should I do farmer's market? Should I do ecommerce? Should I do wholesale, or a combination of two or three of those? I am going to jump in with the pros and cons and what it's going to take for you to succeed in each of those channels, so you can make an informed decision and build a personalized roadmap. Whether you have a delicious idea that you are ready to launch into the world, or you are struggling to get traction in one or more of those channels and you want to grow your business, I got you. Go to foodbizsuccess.com/challenge. This is a brand new experience we are creating, and it's going to be unlike anything we've ever done. You don't want to miss this. The value is going to be incredible at just $27. Walk away with clarity and confidence and excited to take the next steps. See you inside foodbizsuccess.com/challenge. Okay, now back to the podcast.

Scott  16:17  
I'm on it depending on where you are, because you pay for the audit, and then you pay the travel and the hotel for the auditor to come out anywhere between, I'm going to say $900 and maybe $1,600 to $1,800 to get an audit done. 

Sari  16:38  
Plus working with somebody like yourself to do all the plans, because you got to have a plan to audit, yeah, on it. So, you know, I think that that could be at least a $3,000 to $5,000 investment that people don't always anticipate when they get that, you know, they're like, wow, I got into Kroger, even if it's just 10 stores, but they may require these. 

Scott  17:06  
Yeah, Kroger definitely would require a GMP audit as well. And there's different levels of, I won't go into this too much, but just so it's kind of out there. The GMP audit is the lowest level food safety hurdle to cross. 

Sari  17:24  
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about this for sure. What does that stand for? And what is it? 

Scott  17:31  
GMP is Good Manufacturing Practices, and that's all anybody really is going to want to do, because it is getting much more costly. There's different programs out there that have, you know, there's seven levels deep, and we're talking about, you know, creating high pressure rooms so that when you open the door, the air only goes out. And things that we don't want to deal with at our side. So GMP audit is the focus and definitely the most inexpensive. An entire GMP food safety plan would probably be in the neighborhood of 2500 to 3000 to create a fully implementable plan, not probably a little lower than that, I'd say 2500 for most companies, and then your audit on top of that. So your ballpark $3,000 to 5000 is right on to for the whole package. Audit and plan. 

Sari  18:34  
Okay, so we start with a GMP, and then what is. So some people, and it's funny, because I hear people say it's that, H2, A, C, C, P, or, like, I hear all sorts of crazy pronunciations for this, but it's, it's HACCP. What does that stand for? And what is it?

Scott  18:57  
That's stands for Hazards, Analysis, and Critical Control Points. So this was actually a system developed by NASA in the 60s. So it's not strictly food. The food industry just adopted it because it's such a good hazards analysis plan. But basically what it is, it's a whole program where you look at all of your inputs. So I mentioned, you know, the ingredients and where they're coming from. You look at your inputs. You look at your processes, you know, okay, now we're bringing all this raw veggies in. Well, we need to wash them because we need to have no idea what's on them. Could be a chemical. It could be, you know, physical contaminants like glass in the cinnamon, it could be something biological. You know, we've got salmonella on it. So you look at all those hazards, and you say, for each hazard, what could happen? Could somebody get sick? Could somebody get injured? Could somebody die? And you evaluate your process and the ingredients you come up with, where your critical points are, so we know if we don't wash the carrot, we could be passing on e coli, so we better wash the carrot. And so going through that whole analysis, what I do is come up with a finished plan that says, here's your ingredients, here's your process, during your process to make sure we don't hurt anybody, get anybody sick or kill anybody. These are the things that need to be done. If this thing is not done according to how it should be done, you cannot sell the product. So that's what it has to plan does and what it means. It's basically a do or die plan. Now, what the FDA introduced when they came out with FSMA, which is their version of the new food safety program, is they have preventive controls. So those are things that are not do or die points. They're things that you need to put in your process so that you do not have a do or die point down the road. So washing those carrots, let's come back to that. Washing the carrots can be a preventive control, and so we don't need to be at risk for recall because Sally forgot to wash the carrots, because we have another step farther down. You know, we're actually going to cook the carrots and then we're going to have a filtration system for the carrot juice that catches the glass that came in from the cinnamon that we put in the carrot juice. 

Sari  21:47  
What are we making here?

Scott  21:51  
I hope you're taking notes, because it might be good. 

Sari  21:54  
Well, it could be a really good carrot cake.

Scott  21:56  
Yeah, cinnamon carrot juice. So your HACCP plan basically does that, and you have that in place with record keeping that says, yes, we made sure that when we boiled it, it got to 180 degrees. It is documented. We have the person who documented it. We did, you know, our job on this. And another thing I'll add about these kinds of food safety plans is they have more use as a CYA, I'll say, cover your butt. Yes, yeah, than they do for, you know, for food safety compliance, you know, in terms of somebody coming to look at what you're doing, there are all kinds of people out there. They're going to call you up and say, hey, Scott, I had your cinnamon carrot juice and I got sick for a week afterwards. And then you can say, okay, well, tell me about it. Take some information down. Let me check my records. You go back. You did everything you did. There's nothing that could have possibly made this person sick. You call it back and say, I can send you our manufacturing records. We get this product that was cooked to 180 degrees, which killed every possible disease you could have had. So you must have gotten it from something else. But thank you for, you know, giving us a call, you won't hear from them again. So they're going to go down the line to the next thing they ate and see if they can get some money out of that company.

Sari  23:37  
Yeah. And I think, well, I have two kinds of people. Some people that I work with just are like, head in the sand, like I don't want to know, I don't want to deal with it. I like, put blinders on. And then I do have some people that go the opposite, where they then get paralyzed by all the things. And I think what's important to what I really want my founders and folks I work with to hear who are listening is like, there is a certain level of responsibility that you have when you are creating a food product. This is not a t shirt. This is something that is going in people's bodies. And at home, you know, you are dealing with like such a small scale of equipment. And you know, I mean, although they do say our home kitchens are the dirtiest places, right? But you know, it's so much different when you take it into this manufacturing world, and you do have a responsibility for record keeping, for documentation, and you are exposed to a certain amount of risk. You know certainly some products are going to lend themselves to more risk than others, but even the most innocuous product. Like, you know, maybe a snickerdoodle cookie, right? Could still pose that there could be something that gets recalled, or, you know, some kind of contamination that happened, like you said, the glass and the cinnamon, or something like that. So, you know, it really doesn't matter. You know your product at every level. I think we like. I want you to treat your business with respect of like I am giving people things that they put in their body, safe for them. 

Scott  25:34  
Yeah, and probably the biggest thing that people aren't aware of I'm doing training all the time is about cross contamination. And, you know, we know the big allergens, peanut butter, and, you know, gluten for celiac and all that. But there's a lot of other ones out there. For example, I was just in our restaurant and we were talking about the toppings for burgers. And people were using a gloved hand that, you know, grabbed a tomato, put it on the burger, grab some onions, put it on the, you know, grab lettuce, put it on the burger. And we looked at that and said, well, wait a minute, there's people who have allergens to nightshades. And a tomato is a nightshade, you know, they don't get tomato on the burger. So if you've got tomato on your hand because they wanted onions on their burger, we've just cross contaminated that with, you know, not a lot, but we have cross contaminated. So we said, we need to change the system. We need tongs in every bin, and you use the tongs to put that condiment, you know, on the burger, because, you know, I know people actually, my dad has the severe onion allergy. 

Sari  26:47  
Say onions are a big one. 

Scott  26:48  
Yeah. It's strange. He can eat onion powder, but a raw onion, you know, he just gets a bit on his finger, and he's got a belly ache for a day. So there's things like that home kitchens, you know, maybe you're making a gluten free product, and you also do gluten products. What you need to think about, okay, I need to clean my kitchen and then make my gluten free product first, because I'm going to have flour residue, you know, on the counter top, on utensils, you know, on me, you know, from making that gluten product. So cross contamination is a big thing that's often overlooked.

Sari  27:29  
Yeah, absolutely. So we talked about GMP, we talked about HACCP. I hesitate to even get more into FISMA, but I guess I do want to ask, I feel like during the pandemic, I was hearing lots more about, like, tighter and tighter, like the FDA really getting tighter about food safety and starting to require some new things from companies. Has some of that been put on pause, or are there going to, is there going to be more coming down?

Scott  28:05  
There's more coming out. There's actually, I think it's rule 204, that just came out. I'm actually signed up for a webinar on it tomorrow to find out.  I doubt it's going to affect, you know, small companies like the ones we're talking to at all. The FDA is shorted on staff. They're short on funding like, well, now all the government agencies are, but they aren't the ones who are going to be enforcing FISMA or these new rules. What they usually do is, for smaller companies, is they have a contract with the state and your state inspector. Most people see their state inspectors, you know, in their shared kitchens once a month. This is kind of an odd thing, because the state inspector will show up on Monday to do your state inspection, and then they'll say, we'll see you tomorrow to do the Federal Inspection. And then they come in on Tuesday with their federal badges and say, hi, I'm here to do the Federal Inspection. We're just going to do what we did yesterday. 

Sari  29:13  
This is where we could eliminate some. Let's do that at the same time.

Scott  29:19  
And and I think a lot of the states are now taking it, instead of taking the hammer approach, you know, when they see something wrong, they're taking the other approach of education and saying, okay, this is great. What you've got going, but you got a few holes here. We're concerned about this, this and this, so we want you to work on that. And they kind of act as a consultant to help you improve your food safety plan. So instead of coming into, you know, finding as many things as they can to write you up on, you know that that's where, you know. Come back to say what you do and do what you say. If you do that, you will not be written up with a violation. Now, like I said, it doesn't mean you don't have gaps and holes, and you need to do some things, but those are the things that you'll be educated on and the state will say, you know, your GMP plan is great. You've got bathrooms, but we'd really like you to have in your GMP plan that you put soap and paper towels in your bathroom, civil fix, you know, but those are the kinds of things that they want to see. And so because that aligns with the federal GMP guidelines that you know you have to state those kinds of things so it's not going to be, I don't think it's be any harder under the new rules that they've added to it. I think most of it is about tracing where raw food is coming from now, with these, with the big farms, they can tell you, you know, which field and which row that carrot got pulled out of. Those big farms need to keep those kinds of records. So that's where a lot of the emphasis is, because we've had, you know, all of the rash of big industrial food poisoning, and that's where the problems in our system are here. Local companies that you know, that aren't processing a tanker full of corns or aren't going to have the same problems as you know, somebody at home making their you know, gluten free, carrot cinnamon cookie.

Sari  
Right, right, fair enough. Well, the last thing I want to talk about, and you touched on it already, is that traceability piece and a recall plan. And in Food Business Success, I include a template for a recall plan and I talk about traceability and the responsibility of the manufacturer to be, you know, documenting where all of their ingredients come from. But I always say, like, listen, you can do it yourself, but it is really nice. Like, go to Scott. He will put it all together and make sure it's correct. And to have a food safety person listed on your recall plan, I think is a really nice benefit.

Scott  
Yeah, it does give it immediate credibility with your new clients that you're going to be selling to. Yeah, the recall plan, it's a lot of paperwork. The recall plan that I put out is actually, I think 11 different documents. But all you really need to do is follow what is written in one document on one page. The rest of it is mostly just in case material. So if you did have to do a recall, I give you all the templates, the one you need to send to the FDA, the one you need to send to your customers, the one you need to send out to media, how to do your counts and things like that, when you're bringing everything back in. But the crux of your recall plan is tracking your ingredients in and tracking your sales out. Because what the recall plan essentially does is it says, for some reason, well, there's two ways a recall can happen. One iscoming from the customer, and something you produce, somebody calls up. You know, 10 people call them say, oh my gosh, I got so sick when I ate your cinnamon carrot cookie. So then you're thinking, okay, we have a problem. I need to find out where the rest of those are and get them back so we don't make any more people sick. That's the simplest form of the recall. The other side is you get a notice from the farmer that says, hey, you know, those carrots we sent you, somehow I got DDT all over them and people are dying everywhere. You need to recall, you know, it's nothing that could be washed off. It's in the carrot. You need to recall every, you know, product you made with those carrots. Now, you made carrot juice, you made carrot cinnamon cookies.You made carrots in your coleslaw with carrots in it. You use these carrots everywhere, or maybe you didn't. That's what you need to know. So that's why it's so critical to say I used this lot number of carrots in the cookies. And I use this much.I've gotten 20 pounds of carrots in and you used five over here, you used 10 over there. You didn't use any in this other batch. So you need to be able to track that down and say, you know, where is my problem that this farmer just created for me? So that's called forward tracking and backward tracking. You need to be able to do both of those things with your recall plan. 

Sari  
I guess, the last question I want to ask, and it ties into this is, you know, it is your responsibility as the business owner, as the maker, to be monitoring recalls that come in through the FDA. And I know that, you know we talked about that, you know, unless you're at that million dollars and you're not doing, you know, national or kind of these larger chain wholesales that you might not need all of the GMP and the HACCP and all of that, but you still need to register with the FDA. And there is a responsibility, and if you're going over state lines, technically your facility needs to be an FDA, like inspected facility and so maybe can you, like, shed a little light on that piece, because, and it does come back to, you know, as the owner, I am monitoring the recalls that are coming out, like the nuts that you put in those cookies, you know, could get recalled. That happens, and so the obligation for the founder there.

Scott  
Yeah, and it doesn't need to be as tedious as needing to follow the FDA recalls, because if you're buying your food from a distributor, they're required by law to notify you of anything you buy. If you have a frequent shopper card, like a Kroger card, they track everything you buy. I mean, it's kind of scary, but kind of good if you're a producer. They track everything you buy. And if they see that you bought those carrots, you know last month that there are now on recall, you'll get a notice that those carrots have been recalled. So that's an advantage to, you know, loss of privacy on that point. So I just want to address that, and I'm coming back to your question, which was.

Sari  
Well, just about making sure that you know you are registered. Like if you're selling over state lines like you do need to register. It's free. Register with the FDA. 

Scott  
Yeah. And I learned something interesting about that process. They refused to register my dairy plant. I went around around for six months, they said, no, we're not going to register you. The reason was, is even though we're selling wholesale to grocery stores out of the dairy plant, the dairy plant is part of the restaurant, and therefore they take into account where the sales are coming from. So 50% of the sales are direct to consumer via the restaurant. Fifty percent or more, then you don't have a food plant, which seems ridiculous to me. Anyway, I can't register my dairy plant with the FDA. I'm registered with the state, and we get inspected and all of that. But for some reason, the FDA wanted nothing to do with me for the dairy plant. But if 50% or more of your sales are coming from a product that you're manufacturing and distributing into distribution channels and not selling direct to the customer, then yes, you need to do an FDA registration, and it's free. You have to renew it every two years, and it's basically just giving them information about who you are, where you're located, what you're manufacturing, I think who you're selling to. They make it into a 15 minute process to get through. But that's all the information is, and a DUNS number. 

Sari  
So yeah. And, you know, I've had another guest come into our membership and talk, kind of talk us through the whole FDA registration. But I think it's good to mention here that like, yeah, when you are selling across state lines and certain channels, that you need to make yourself aware to the FDA, so that if things were to happen, they can find you and they know about you. 

Scott  
I think they use it more for Census data. You know, how many food manufacturers, and what size are they, and where do they make? 

Sari  
And, yeah, for sure. Well, this is super helpful, kind of helping us navigate food safety at a high level. I think it's always good for me to reiterate, you know, the importance, the responsibility of this, and yes, you can figure out a lot of this stuff on your own, or I'm a big fan of finding your who's, people like myself, who are who, who then know people like you, and now people know you, but like, go find a who. This is something, in my opinion, like you got way more stuff that you need to do as a brand owner, and go spend your time getting sales, and make an investment to go work with somebody like Scott to just get this stuff done and do it correctly, and you're going to get it done so much faster than the layperson.

Scott  
Yeah, my first food safety plan, I think, took me over a year to get right, you know, right for our business.

Sari  
It's a lot, and it's complex, and the language, I mean, I just personally don't have time for that stuff. It's like anything like that. I'm just like, go find a who can help me with this, make that investment. And then I know like CYA, I know it's done, right? I know I have somebody to contact if I'm have questions. So this has been super helpful. We're going to bring you into Fuel here coming soon, so people will be able to ask you their questions specifically and get more support from you. I'll put your contact information in the show notes as well. So people want to reach out, just let them know you you heard him on the podcast, and so, yeah, you'll probably have some more people coming your way. 

Scott  
All right. Great. Well, thank you very much for the invitation to talk with you. 

Sari  
My pleasure. Yeah, this was so good. It's so fun to finally meet you. Thank you for being willing to do what you do like it's not for everyone. Appreciate it, Scott. 

Scott  
All right, thanks, Sari. 

Sari  
What a great conversation with Scott. Actually, I feel that was really fun, right? Talking about food safety, I learned some new things. I hope you learned a lot, and it's such an important part of your business, right? I want you to take responsibility for it. I want you to do what you need to do. Don't freak out, right? Your next step is not to freak out, but it's to say, what is it that I don't have? What is it I need? You know, how can I get it done, either myself or working with someone like Scott? Inside Food Business Success, I have a whole section on food safety. I walk you through how to register with the FDA. We have a recall template. I have traceability documents like this is just stuff that needs to become a part of your business. It's not we have to do this extra work. It's like, no, this is just a part of the manufacturing process. So it's time to take responsibility, make sure you're doing it. Come get support, and I would love to see you inside Fuel, and you get to come and talk to Scott in our group and bring your particular questions, which is so fantastic. So that'll be coming up later in 2025 and I'd love for you to join us. And until next time, have an amazing week!

Sari  
The smartest thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to invest in a who to help you with the how to speed up your journey and help you skip the line. When you are ready for more support and accountability to finally get this thing done, you can work with me in two ways. Get me all to yourself with one on one business coaching, or join Food Business Success, which includes membership inside Fuel, our community of food business founders that includes monthly live group coaching calls and so much more. It's one of my favorite places to hang out, and I would love to see you there. Go to foodbizsuccess.com to start your journey towards your own food business success.