[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Welcome to Spoiler Alert. I'm doctor Darin Detwiler, author, professor, columnist, keynote speaker. I've been around the world of food safety for over 3 decades, and I'm excited to be here, joined by...
[Callin Godson-Green] Former Head of Food Safety across the hospitality industry in Europe and the US, currently working as a Food Safety Manager here at SmartSense by Digi.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Callin and I are both very excited to be here to provide this roundtable opportunity to bring in so many different experts from a wide range of experiences and backgrounds across different aspects of industry to talk about some of the most pressing issues that face us in terms of food safety. Now someone might ask why are we called Spoiler Alert? For most people, when they hear the phrase, spoiler alert, they think, oh, they're going to reveal something about the plot of some movie that's coming out this weekend or whatever, or you know, who won the big game that that they've got recorded that they want to watch later or whatever. But I think that it's not just about a critical piece of information. And we can obviously extend that into any industry, but here we're talking about the food industry and beyond, but Callin, how do you view the idea of a spoiler alert, especially when it comes to food?
[Callin Godson-Green] Well, I'll put my food safety hat on and tell you exactly what you think I'm sure is the same when you hear spoiler alert. Whether it's an issue itself, the spoiler of what's about to happen, or we're talking in terms of actual food safety quality, God forbid, recalls withdrawals, those sort of things.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Yeah, for some people is. Does this include this allergen? For other people is, you know, can I still use this? Is it expired? Does it smell good? Does it smell bad to some people? Has this been recalled or is this from this company or is this something I need to worry about? There are so many different lenses through which we look at a critical piece of information when it comes to food. And we have to take that into consideration, not only in terms of being in the hands of a consumer, but how do people, whether it's at that point of sale or the point of manufacturing or at a leadership level, really think about and communicate and prioritize and even budget for these critical elements that to many of us become kind of whittled down to a spoiler alert.
[Callin Godson-Green] Definitely, I'm excited to learn how people within the industry themselves tackle these things and their perceptions. You know, any tips and tricks they can give us? Coming from an auditing background and like regulatory and legislative background, I was on the other side. So, I'm excited to learn from the best, from the people that have to do it day in and day out. What works for them and what they find doesn't work.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Every episode we're going to explore a different topic and bring in some different experts to our panel. And you know, not necessarily grill them with questions, but really engage them in some real-world conversations about these issues and put them to the task in terms of kind of sharing their expertise and how different perspectives might interpret these views. I'm excited for our first episode here we have JP Thomas of honeygrow and Callin, you've worked with him a bit, haven’t you?
[Callin Godson-Green] Definitely? I've had the absolute pleasure to work with JP, and I've already learned so much from him over the last few years, and now I'm definitely going to learn some more today. So excited to have him here.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] I think we're all going to learn something from JP today, so I'm really glad you're joining us.
[JP Thomas] Hi, everyone. I'm JP Thomas. I work with honeygrow, which is a fast casual restaurant that serves delicious, create-your-own stir fry and salad and mostly focused in the northeast of the United States right now. But we're growing really quickly. So hopefully if you're not near one today, you will be near one soon. And I’m happy to be here.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Well, thank you for joining us on this episode. We're going to be talking about two concepts that should work together, but often we see do not. We're talking about being proactive and reactive. And I think most cases that we typically hear about the ones that you know, you see the headlines, you see them on the 11 o’clock news and throughout the 24-hour news. We see a lot of evidence of where it appears that companies are being rather reactive, they're taking action after something has happened after there's a need for a recall after people have been harmed, and now we are talking about the need to do not only recall, but an outbreak investigation and one has to wonder, why are we not putting more emphasis into the proactive? Being able to prevent in the first place, in addition to the purely well when it happens, then we'll deal with it. And I'll kind of put this out there. I realize that we cannot predict everything, but at the same time, on the other end of the spectrum, we can't wait until it's too late to now respond. That is not a good, healthy approach to many different aspects. So I'm going to hand it over to Callin to kind of get us into this topic of proactive versus reactive.
[Callin Godson-Green] It's impossible to predict everything, but having that proactive mindset going beyond just documentation on your day-to-day activities and sort of where you focus your energy is something that I think a lot of food businesses can improve on. However, I've had the absolute pleasure and fortune to be working alongside JP for the last two plus years and something I've noticed in his role that often falls normally to those in the food safety position, of kind of keeping this proactive mindset, JP and his team do an excellent job of being proactive in food safety through a number of different methods. And you know, using a number of different resources. JP is there some insight there you have on how exactly you got this to work and how you got the big boss’ to buy in?
[JP Thomas] I'm really lucky on the buy-in front that our entire leadership team feels as strongly as I do about ensuring that we're serving not just delicious food, but safe food. And so with that, that thankfully has not been a challenge for me. I know that's not the case in every organization, but we've got a very supportive team and everyone understands the importance and I know through working with Callin every week, Callin’s been really great with SmartSense. And analyzing our temperature data through the sensors that we've deployed in all of our refrigeration units to identify the health of the unit itself and grade that health on a weekly basis and send it over to us. With them, I mean, you know, we've all been conditioned our entire life to not want to get a bad grade. So it's been a very helpful set of data that we we don't just look out from a, OK, we have a failing unit let's fix this one unit that's absolutely poor. But also just watching the progression of each individual unit and identifying the signs that may be indicating that it's headed south and needs to, whether it's be replaced or have new gaskets installed, or there's behaviors in the restaurants that we need to address, there's so much that the data that we're collecting to those sensors can tell us. And our entire team, you know, Becca Ridgway on our team really leads the charge. Now on analyzing that data every week and reaching out to the teams, reaching out to the district managers and working with them to diagnose what the issue is and making sure that we're addressing it before we're actually having a unit that's not in proper temperature, right? So, identifying those issues early before we have alarms going off waking us up in the middle of the night. Yeah, it's been incredibly helpful. We've been able to solve a lot of issues again, both physically with the equipment, but also behavior based, right, like teams that are propping refrigerator doors open while they're restocking and shouldn't be and things of that nature that just makes their equipment work that much harder and overtime that will that will cause a lot of wear and tear. So, it's just one of the many ways that we try to be proactive. And like Dr. you said I think it's got to be a mix of both. And even if you can't predict everything that's coming, making sure that your teams understand what to do when the unknown happens. Who to call, where to go, what resources they have to determine what they can do, I think is also incredibly important. The training component of food safety is paramount.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] I'm glad you brought up behavior because so much of anything in terms of proactive or reactive or team leadership, or you know, trying to manage a wide range of stakeholders. It has to do with behaviors, whether it is behavior and what questions to ask or how to interpret the data, or whether you leave a door open for a long time or not. You know, it all comes down to behavior sometimes. That outweighs a lot of logic, but there are two issues that I think often are the predominant factors that impact behavior. One is and the understanding of the impact on public health.
[Callin Godson-Green] Yeah.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] And the true impact of the true burden of disease, if you will. The second motivator is economics. The idea that it is to our economic advantage to prevent these problems, whether it's a recall or an outbreak from happening in the first place. And I have some data and what's weird is depending on where you look, you get different numbers, but it all points towards the same thing. I was involved in a doctoral level research a number of years back where it found that on average the cost of compliance versus the cost of non-compliance. Being out of compliance was 17 times more expensive than being in compliance, that idea of whether it's legal fees or federal fines or the cost of additional, you know, auditing, inspections, work stoppage, whatever it is, right. But I've recently seen some other global data that indicated that for every $1 that is put into proactive food safety efforts, it can save $20 to $30 of the reality of the consequences of the failure to have stopped something. Whether the numbers were 17/20/30, it still paints a picture in terms of the idea that it is far more economically advantageous for us to be proactive than to purely be reactive. JP, what are your thoughts on this?
[JP Thomas] I would agree and I think there you're avoiding a cost by being proactive and that's going to speak to a lot of people. But you know, I have a background in operations and I've worked my whole life in the restaurant industry, started as a server. I can tell you every one of us wants more sales. And so I also look at being proactive as a service to our guests as a way to make sure that we're serving a safe product so that we can get additional guests to get additional sales because there's not...you know, I liken it to when you are a server and you're getting that feedback and your pre-shift at the beginning of every shift. And like oh, we got a complaint today. Oh, we got this complaint today we need to do this to avoid these complaints, right? Avoiding a complaint in hospitality would be the same as let's do just enough to pass the health inspection in food safety, right? We don't want to live above the complaint line. We want to actually make sure people are leaving feeling good, having eaten our food and not feeling sick. Or two hours later, or 24 hours later, and as humans, we should want that, but also as business people. As people who want to sell more food, we should want that as well, because no one's going to come back if they're feeling sick after eating in a restaurant. No one's going to come back. And it's not just, you know, full-on illness, but stomach rumbles and things of that nature right. We want to be better than living above the complaint line. We want to make sure that we're serving truly safe and delicious food, and I think that's a big differentiator.
[Callin Godson-Green ]I agree. I do think, though, that all of us here in this room ave the benefit of understanding that and understanding these kind of hypothetical costs associated with, if there was a problem, in my experience as a food safety manager, what I often ran into was the idea that if I presented your data Dr. D: $1 here saves us $30 in the future, but it's still $1 here that I need to invest right now to prevent maybe something happening in the future. So having that kind of conversation with leadership was often a very tough sell, for lack of a better term for me, and whether it be actually sale of a system like ours that would give this extra visibility or whether it's just selling the idea of a process change or changing supplier for safety concerns, it was always sort of weighed up against this idea of all other costs and impact of the business because this food safety issue hasn't happened yet and I think that we've all seen where large corporations that have had some sort of food safety concern, then very much pivot their attitude towards putting it all behind food safety. And you know, letting the leaders there lead and you know JP, you mentioned being very fortunate with not needing to have such a maybe difficult conversation with your leadership team. They believe in you and the program and the system that you want to build. But that's definitely not the case for a lot of food businesses. And I think especially smaller businesses. Maybe, you know, priority is on sales, how much, how many sales can we make today? And taking something off the menu or shutting down for safety concerns can impact that directly.
[JP Thomas] Yeah, I think and we've got to remember that being proactive doesn't need to be incredibly hard. We already asked our managers to do so much, whether it's, you know, be a personnel expert, a therapist to their team, business expert, a labor expert, a food. Expert. They're genuinely pulled in so many different directions, and so we do also need them to be experts on this topic, but that's why I always look whether it’s in training or food safety or culinary, is there a way that we can help them? Is there something we can automate? Is there a tool that we can give them to make their job of being proactive in this area easier and we'll continue to do so. Continue to assess in the world of AI there's new things coming out every day that can help us be proactive. And at a lower cost. And so that's where it's really great to be able to look at the data that we're seeing and help them see what's going on in their restaurants, even without being there because they can't see everything, they can't do everything. It's physically impossible for them. So having the background in operations that I do have helps me to understand what they're going through, and that they need help and that any tool that we can develop or devise or think of to put in front of them is worth working on.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] You mentioned a couple of things that really, I have to admit, I agree with so much. I've encountered situations where either the Senior Vice President of food Safety and Quality Assurance says we need to do something and they're stopped by someone who's way below them in the finance department, you know? Oh, that's not a budget item and you need to prove this. And the joke was that, you know, hey, we need to have defensive equipment to make sure that our employees up in the North Pole aren't getting mauled by polar bears. It's like, well, let's wait until we have some evidence that shows that polar bears are mauling our employees. Before we invest in this, OK, how many employees do we have to lose now before we justify the expenditure right?
[Callin Godson-Green] Totally.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] But at the same time, I've been in situations where it's like, well, we had the local data, but no one thought to send the local data to the regional or district or whatever. And when I see use of technology that it just skips that point and says we're going to take this data and we're going to put it into the hands of our regional or district or corporate headquarters because we have so many franchises across a wide geography. He now skips that decision making from the local when it comes to very pertinent data to someone at a more senior level. And this is one of those things. I mean, I've seen a situation where there was a recall notice that was delivered to a grocery store and the manager of the grocery store decided not to act upon it because he hadn't heard any other evidence beyond the letter from the US Department of Agriculture. And someone died as a result of this. And the the headquarters, the CEO the C-Suite executives devastated because if they had had this information, they would have acted differently. So it's not enough to have the information, we have to have the idea of what do we do reactively and proactively with this information and how are we using technology to make sure that any kind of information, any data, anything from sensors or logs or whatever it is, is in the right hands at the right time to make a timely decision. That's how we can kind of be in the middle between the reactive and the proactive, it wasn't something we predicted. We didn't wait until the equipment completely failed to now realize there's a problem when there's always evidence that there was a red flag, weeks and weeks and weeks ago, but no one looked at it, no one acted on that. That is, I think where we can best leverage this idea of being productive and reactive is finding that happy spot in the middle.
[JP Thomas] I agree, and I think it's knowing and making it known through the organization what everyone's role in food safety is is incredibly important to accomplish that, right. Whether it's something as simple as making sure that everyone on our support team knows that when going into a restaurant, the first thing to do is wash gands all the way up to doing, you know, learning from our partners and our tech team with their drills that they do to make sure they're ready for anything that might happen from an IT security standpoint. We have really taken and done the same thing from a recall standpoint or any situation like that and we've we updated that workbook. And make sure that everyone comes to that quarterly meeting to make sure everyone knows, Alright, if you get this recall notice, here's who needs to know about it. Here's where it needs to go. Who is on that distribution list? If you're on PTO, who else is getting it? So we know who to step in and it's all well documented. But a great document in a drawer isn’t going to do anything if people don't know what's in the document. So those drills and those meetings have been really helpful for us to make sure that we're ready and knock on some wood because we haven't needed to actually have a real incident, but we're ready if we do.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Callin, I don't remember if we talked about this. Were you every musician?
[Callin Godson-Green] No.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler ] JP?
[JP Thomas ] No. I have zero musical talent.
[Callin Godson-Green] We do look it though I get, I get it.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] I bring this up because it's amazing when I think back a long ways to when I was in high school and we had this big banner on the band room wall and it basically said practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. And I think about that in terms of recalls. I think about that in terms of so many elements. With the food safety, you know, if we do a drill and we just do what's convenient and we don't treat it like it's the real thing, then we're not truly preparing for the drill. If we're collecting data and we're not truly reacting to and processing and analyzing the data as if there's a real concern, there's a real need to make sure that we're always doing this, then it's going to become, you know, that kind of passive, you know, we keep pushing the hill up or we keep pushing the boulder up the hill. But we don't actually achieve anything. We're just collecting data, but we don't actually do anything. How do we make sure that when we're collecting information when we're communicating, when we're working with our team, how do we make sure that it's as real as possible in terms of the idea of assuming that we can have tomorrow, you know, an outbreak or recall within our responsibility that could put us to the test. And if we don't practice for it like a sports team or a High School Musical, a marching band or whatever, then we're not going to attack that real world evolution and exercise whatever with the same type of capability.
[JP Thomas] Yeah, I think it's important to have a third party, whether it's even if it's just, you know, someone from accounting or finance that comes in and plays the role of the lead for the drill. And it's just like, OK, this is what's happening. And I've never played Dungeons and Dragons, but I've seen enough movies to know that there's someone there. driving the storyline and so we kind of bring someone in that's not part of the team that would be responding to the incident and have them lead the drill to make sure that they're the ones saying, OK, this is what's happening now, what's next, what's next and kind of scoring us on and holding that game plan in their hand and grading whether or not we execute it all or not. So it it's going well for us.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Well, I would hope that it would be through those evolutions that you're kind of avoiding some of those spoiler alerts in terms of, oh, we know, this can happen. Ohh, we know we have to communicate with these people. Oh, we know, we have to use this tool this way or oh, we know we have to take these steps as opposed to, Wow, now we're doing this and we didn't realize we had to do these things. I was just talking months ago with a company who was involved in a recall and they knew that a large amount of their products were sold online. But it wasn't until they're in the middle of a recall that they realized, oh, we have to actually communicate with these online platforms and figure out how to do a recall. And I just kept thinking, why didn't you think that through in terms of how you were preparing for it in terms of, well, how are we going to do the online part of it?
[JP Thomas] Yeah. And it's we're really lucky again that I also lead the tech team. We're really lucky that our leadership is incredibly understanding of how important technology is, down to the fact that 100% of our transactions are digital transactions. If they're not done online on a website or a mobile app, or a third party, we have kiosks in our restaurants. So when we were building our tech app when we were building our kiosks and our mobile app. Everyone was very supportive of how adamant I was that we keep, you know, how can we 86 things in one place and those items will be removed across all platforms as quickly as possible? Because I want us to be able to effectively recall something or remove something from the menu, but also because I want to be easy for our operators. How can we make sure that there's ways for us to communicate with our guests when they're ordering and afterwards, and we've been able to do a really great job of doing that, but again, we're lucky that we do have all digital orders. So it was a really easy selling point for us to continue to enhance that product to make sure that it's as best as it can be.
[Callin Godson-Green] I love that you mentioned, obviously, we're here talking about food safety, but realistically ease of use for operators and those that are in the field, they're the ones that own the business. They need to be able to do things quickly, efficiently and understand it. And I think that honeygrow’s positive culture and I know that's important. That was very important to your CEO. And it shines through and that's why it's so successful. And you guys are growing so rapidly because the culture for employees 1st and food safety culture is just unbelievable. Like there's no need to bring sort of arguments to the table and loads of evidence. It's very much like if this is the right thing to do and you can show me how we can solve this, make dates today easier for the business, for our guests, for our employees, let's do it and we'll go from there and work on the project. Like the reputation of honeygrow very much shines through as soon as you step foot in the door. First of all, greetings from employees. In Philly, that's quite rare, and all the honeygrows are the same, but especially in Philly, you walk into a restaurant, you can tell right away, employees value being there, they care, they're interested, they'll ask questions. Even your allergen guide, I think, is very progressive and something that I noticed a lot in Europe is kind of lacks in the US but the honeygrow attention to details. From food safety and beyond is just brilliant and I think one of the keys for your success definitely.
[JP Thomas] Yeah, I mean, I've been in companies and worked in companies throughout the years, that will take an approach, they use the hammer, right? Ohh if you pass this and if you fail this inspection, you're fired. If you failed three in a row, you're fired or you're going to get demoted. Or it's you're not going to get your bonus or whatever. Whatever it is, whether it's a health inspection or a third-party inspection that you pay to come out or a district manager inspection. And you know, we do have those inspections, we pay a third-party auditor to come in. We have our health inspectors, we have a first party audit that our district managers do because I think it is incredibly helpful to always have new perspective on what's happening in our restaurants and get fresh perspective. And make sure that we are educating our existing and new managers, but that has to be the goal. It's about education. It's about making sure that our team knows what the right thing to do and people don't wake up in the morning wanting to fail. I confidently believe that. So I don't, I don't think we need to look at people and say pass this or you're going to...because that brings so much pressure and stress. I felt it that it all just becomes about how do I kiss this auditor’s ass so I don't get a failing score because I don't want to lose my job. And I stress out so much that I'm no longer making the right decisions for the right reasons, which means I'm going end up not making the right decisions. And so, our entire team has been very careful. All of our audits are not a part of bonus structures. They're not a part of any sort of performance reviews. They're not. We never leverage it as a hammer. It's always just a tool for education and training and getting better and then turning around and making those around us better as well.
[Callin Godson-Green] Definitely. When I worked as an auditor...the businesses that the audits...and I'm not, it's not you know...what works for some doesn't work for others...but the businesses where audits were a part of kind of that either bonus structure or there was severe consequences for a failure of audit, most of those businesses had sort of like an inspector checklist they would do when you came in and they wouldn't know why they were doing it, but they would do it so it would be like, you know. And. Whatever it might be: close the lids of the garbage cans. When that used to be a big thing in the city, making sure that all the bins or trash cans were lidded. They would go around and do that. And if you spoke to them about it, they wouldn't understand why they needed to be closed. They're just like, oh, well, the list says close them. So we did that. Whereas the idea of training and if that proactive, you know, giving them the tools and the education in advance. Not only are you equipping them to make sure your business runs safer, but you're equipping them with skills for life. Like I think there has been a good few studies done on training that occurs in the workplace and have people bring it home with them. Then they prepare food better at home. They prepare it safe for their more interested. And I'm good friends with the head chef from, he works in a bar here in New York. And when you open his fridge in his house, you see every single thing has a day label in his home fridge just because he's like, well, I need to remember when I was there. I'm working most of the time. So I need to know, did I cook that Monday, yesterday or Monday last week. So definitely skills for life. And you're equipping them with the tools.
[JP Thomas] Oh, absolutely. I've thrown away more black pepper than probably anyone with what I've learned in the restaurant industry. No one can ever use that big of a container for sure. And I will say too, I was speaking to someone several years ago and asking about what they're doing at the company they were working at and there it was, a server. They were waiting tables and they're like, so when the host comes on the microphone, they have these headset things and says Surf's up. We all know that a health inspector just walked in the door and we each have a laminated card in our pocket of things we need to go do and they hand out the cards at the beginning of our shift. And it was just the epitome of we're not doing this all the time. We're just getting ready for an inspection and there was nothing proactive about that. It was proactively getting ready to pass an inspection, but not proactive food safety for sure.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] What are your thoughts in terms of digital information, digital tasks? How can a company be more proactive in making sure that it's not just when the host gets on the wire and says surfs up as a secret safe word or whatever, but how can we make sure that we that we have the ability to receive information the way they want it and in a time of manner?
[JP Thomas] Yeah, we are lucky to have a really great training team that that just as a phenomenal job and they really are focused on meeting our team where they are. And so much of that is understanding who our team members are, what generation they're from, what languages they speak and how they're used to learning. And like you said, if someone learns best by seeing by doing, by hearing, by reading, we've got to make sure that we're providing all of those methods of education. And we found, and this isn't groundbreaking. The industry tells us this and training conferences and etcetera: much shorter bursts, much smaller videos, not these long videos that I'm sure the three of us have experienced in our lifetime. Or the half hour food safety video when I get hired here in the 45 minute and sexual harassment video when I get hired there. You know, somewhere around minute #10 you're not paying attention, you're not absorbing, you're not going to remember. And so by really breaking the information up into much smaller segments and making it more engaging, our training team makes it funny and incorporates memes and pop culture references and videos, and they're all translated. They've all got subtitles in multiple languages. But also the video itself is translated in English and Spanish. But then there's other languages in the subtitles. As well, but they really do a great job and I think it's so critical to meet the team where they’re at.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Think about meeting the team where they're at. I think that we the three of us are a little jazz rock fusion trio here we're acting as such a great team that we could literally talk for another half hour. But I think that perhaps in the interest...like you were just talking about the idea that perhaps shorter is better. Maybe we need to kind of have an opportunity for some final thoughts on this idea of working within the kind of awareness of being proactive and reactive and that it really takes on so many different meanings, whether it's behavior, technology, leadership, communication, training, that different range, the spectrum of activities that could span generations, language, geographical distance between facilities, you know, different products and manufacturing lines and so many different needs. What are some final thoughts that you have, JP, in terms of something we talked about or perhaps a message that you want to make sure is clear that people get? From your experience, when it comes to looking at proactive and reactive.
[JP Thomas] Yeah, I think my final thought would certainly be a simple one and it's I think that one of the most important things we can do to be proactive is always going to fall back on training and making sure it goes back to what I mentioned earlier that people don't wake up in the morning wanting to fail. And so if you train your team really well, they know what's right, they know what's wrong, they know the right way to do it, more often than not, they will. And build in as many safeguards as you can to help them and support them and provide them with as many tools as you can to make their job easier and more effective. But the training, you can give as many tools and checklists as you want to, but without effective training they're not going to get used or used properly.
[Callin Godson-Green] Yeah. I just think that was absolutely great. And it's so interesting to hear the insight into what makes such a successful operation and growth operation and honeygrow. I couldn't agree more. Training is vital. All food safety managers, all managers, think that really. But kind of an underlying theme throughout as well was communication, so that idea of communication both ways, like feedback loops from your operations, you know operational employees that are in your restaurants all the way to the very top. And you know JP, where you fall needing to communicate both upwards and downwards and communicate not only what needs to be done but why and having that understanding and ability to translate that into the language, depending who you're speaking to and understanding what's important to them. If you're trying to convince a team member that this new system that you're implementing is going to be beneficial for them. No one likes change. No one likes to learn new things. But if you can show them how it will improve their efficiencies, their day-to-day running, let them focus on the guests and things at hand. That's key. But you also there and are responsible for translating that into language that you know your CEO will understand and get behind. So communication across the business is just fundamental for food safety and all areas. But this has been brilliant.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] JP Thomas of honeygrow, thank you very very much.
[JP Thomas] Thank you. Have a great day.
[Callin Godson-Green] You too. Absolutely fantastic.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] I have to admit, we talked about far more than I thought we were going to talk about, but talk about a wealth of information and examples that he brought to the table. And you, you really brought out some deeper points, deeper understanding from him as well. And I have to admit there's a couple of things that keep lingering with me in terms of some things I'm taking away from this message, and I think my first one is that no one wants to wake up thinking that things are going to go bad today or that they're going to ruin someone's life or I don't know, the company's going to go out of business or that this idea of the perfect view of their company is going to be tarnished for whatever reason. I don't think anyone wakes up and says that's what their day is going to be like at work.
[Callin Godson-Green] No, I agree. And I think, JP, his energy and care there on those items is just like, it's contagious. It's such an exciting and fast-paced topic to learn from him because he's truly, he does it all and he's been through it all so he can speak not only kind of from the perspective that you or I might come to it, but from the operator up to the big bosses, as we say, no, absolutely right. And like it's so true. I never really thought about it like that. But you know, people don't wake up willing to do bad things, or even with the intention of accidentally doing bad things. You wake up with the intention to have a good day to be successful at your job. You know, jobs, you don't have to be there. People choose to be there. They want to be there. They want to do well. So changing that mindset, I feel like that would result in a shift in attitude across an entire business if you kind of had that outlook and understand it.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Oh sure. I mean, in its own way that is kind of being proactive, that idea of, you know, like a mantra, you know, I'm going to do good today. I'm going to, you know, we're going to do this. Our outcome is going to be this. The benefits are going to be this. If you have that kind of like a mantra that's a way of proactively going into, whether it's your day, your week, your quarter or whatever. And that that's good for whatever hat you wear.
[Callin Godson-Green] Maybe we should start that at the beginning of the episode. We'll say that a few times and then we'll go into it.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] It sounds like a great plan. Thank you for proactively coming up with an idea for what we can do going forward. Well Callin, I'm so thrilled what we were able to put together here for our first episode and I can't wait for our next episode,
[Callin Godson-Green] Absolutely.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us on this episode of Spoiler Alert. And until next time, think about your mantra.
