US Foods Receives 14th Annual Food Quality & Safety Award

Past winners of the annual Food Quality & Safety Award include Backyard Farms, Hans Kissle, Mastronardi Produce, Fieldale Farms, West Liberty Foods, and Hormel Foods.

GFSI: A Central Strategy

Image Credit: US Foods
Proper storage and appropriate rotation are critical to ensure the safety and quality of the foods in US Foods’ warehouses.

While US Foods has continued to upgrade its technology, staff training, key performance indicators, and other FSQA systems and procedures over the past year, Hernandez says that GFSI certification of its different businesses was central to its strategy.

“The reason is that certification provided a vehicle for us to get the food safety directive into each business unit’s leadership while instilling the discipline to measure, track, and review the food safety and quality key performance indicators on a regular basis as part of the business review,” he says. “That combination allowed us to drive food safety and food safety performance into the business.”

That being said, he emphasizes that each food safety and quality project and action is important since they each provide value to the company and its business.

Staff training is also important. Every staff member has specific food safety and quality training aspects to their job. For example, he says a delivery driver’s training focuses on time and temperature risks, as well as controls and his/her role in keeping the food safe in transit and during delivery. The same training is also taken by his/her supervisor, with the added tasks of how and when to check and document a drivers’ non-compliance.

“All these are checked by internal and third-party audits several times a year,” he says. “This allows us to embed the food safety and quality actions into the day-to-day delivery operations.” The same strategy is followed with all other positions.

Hernandez explains that while everyone who handles food at US Foods has a food safety and quality responsibility, his team is formed by 40 corporate FSQA staff with direct line responsibilities and more than 300 associates in the distribution centers who have FSQA functions embedded in their jobs with dotted line responsibilities. For example, every distribution center has several recall coordinators, a couple of produce inspectors, and a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) coordinator.

“So there are a number of different folks who do those things in a distribution center, but who do not report directly to FSQA,” Hernandez says. All corporate workers are HACCP-certified, as are two to three staffers at each distribution center.

“HACCP is one of our basic building blocks. It’s expensive and time-consuming, but it goes to the approach you take on how you embed food safety within the business,” he says. “When you make food safety and quality a requirement of the business, it’s just another thing that you have to do. But when you make it a value to the business, it becomes a lot easier to explain the disruptions, changes, and expenses you’re making to the business.”

Image Credit: US Foods
Most of the company’s distribution centers have state-of-the-art kitchens used by US Foods Fanatic Chefs not only to work with their local customers in the latest culinary techniques, but also to teach proper “hands on” food safety practices that can be used in restaurants.

He adds, “From the beginning, we’ve been able to provide information on how that investment pays back the business. When we’re able to win more customers because we have better documentation than others with more certifications, and you make that more well known, it becomes a value rather than a cost.”