[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Welcome everyone. This is Spoiler Alert. I'm Dr. Darrin Detwiler.
[Callin Godson-Green] I'm Callin Godson-Green.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Good to see you.
[Callin Godson-Green] Always, in person this time.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] In person, not just in person, but we are here at the International Association for Food Protection IAFP in Cleveland. OH, coming to IAFP is kind of like almost like a high school reunion or a gathering of heroes and that's clearly what we have going on here.
[Callin Godson-Green] Food safety heroes.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Food safety heroes, all wear different capes and have different names. We have different skill sets to bring, but we all are kind of common in our focus and our mission in terms of what we do.
[Callin Godson-Green] That’s a nice way to think of it.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] I got another spoiler for you. We're not alone. We have a guest.
[Callin Godson-Green] Go on. Spoiler alert.
[Dr. Darin Detwiler] Yeah. Yes. Wearing his very dapper grey superhero attire. Matt Anselmo, welcome. Thank you. Where are you coming in from? So I happen to live in the city of these superheroes. Pittsburgh being one of them. Another many great heroes coming out of the steel city.
Speaker 1
Yes.
Speaker 3 Excellent. So not far away, just down the river, kind of like the man. Speaker 1 Of. Steel of Steel City. It fits. It does fit. It does fit, you know, fits. You have a pretty good job title. Will you tell us for those who have no idea who? Speaker 3 Yes, actually, yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 You are and. What you do? What is your superhero? Speaker 3 Thanks. And so first of all, I'm really happy to be here. I appreciate it. Anytime we get to talk about food safety as a group, especially at somewhere. Special like IFP. It's just a whole lot of fun sharing thoughts and and experiences with people. But again, my name is Matt Anselmo. I work for Giant Eagle supermarkets. We're a local retail grocer here in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Closely, we have about 220 locations, so. Quite a bit of locations out there serving communities with food for over 100. Years. Ohh, it's quite a storied history and for them I run our food safety program at. The retail level. Speaker 1 Excellent, excellent. And you have to admit the retail establishment, I mean this is where most people are interacting now. We're not all going to farms, we're not all going to, you know, the local farmers market or the CSA and sure and most people are getting their food from a grocery store. So food safety at a grocery store is kind of a junction. Speaker Yeah. Speaker 1 Where you're not only talking about protecting consumers, you're also talking about the idea of the food safety. Computation of all of the companies behind the brands on your shelves and of your own entity being uh, you know, the food safety, reputation of giant. Speaker 3 Eagle. Absolutely. It's an honor to do it. And we look at it as is not really a job, but a lifestyle as well. People come to us for their events where where the event destination. So you're holding your Thanksgiving meal, you're holding your Christmas meal. All these things that people take and hold so dear. For them, with all of their loved ones, you know we're center stage and we have to show up every day. And that just means that we have to be on our game every day. One mistake can turn into into a tragedy. So just super excited about the opportunity to speak with you guys about food safety. Well, the honors ours and I got to tell you, you know, when you're looking at. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 Food safety. In, in most cases I would imagine if you were to talk with wide range of people here they'll say look, I'm focused on this one product or this one packaging or this one line or this one group. But a retail, I mean you've got everything coming at you from every different shape and size and angle. Frozen dry, canned, fresh. Uh you. You've got so many different things going on. You. Literally. Yeah. I don't know if you have a. Playbook but it's got to be huge. Speaker 3 I can't describe how many responsibilities, so if we go down to the store level, a store leader and the awesome responsibility that. Have to not only look after food safety, but for guest satisfaction, right? For sales, for shrink, for labor. They have so many things to to contend with. I just love the fact that I can focus on food safety with our group and get that message across to them and be their support structure so that they can be successful. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 3 At store level. But you're right, we have delis. We have produce, we have bakeries. Meat departments where we still actually cut and processed meat in our stores, well owned pharmacy and all the other additions that you can think of, it's something new every day, which is also why I love my job. Speaker Well. Speaker 1 I don't know how often you go. To the grocery store in new. Speaker 2 York City? Not that often. Speaker 1 Well, you know, but we still go to the store. Of course. I would imagine though that you don't go to the grocery store and just. Buy dry goods or just buy frozen goods, or just buy fresh deli meat or whatever. You're going to have a little bit of everything. A whole mambo #5 collection of different kinds of foods. Right. And that's gotta really challenge you in terms of that idea of of not only you know, reacting but trying to be proactive in terms of food. Speaker 2 Smorgasbord of Africa. Speaker 3 Safety. Absolutely. I think in past it was a lot of canning and processing shelf stable type food, but a lot of people are turning to more healthy options, they want fresh food, they want food prepared on site, they want access to it and they want it all hours. Of. The day? Yeah, they also. Want it delivered right? So there's so many different challenges as we try to bring that food from center store out to the perimeter departments where traditionally that's where your. Fresh product is. And and get our our folks shopping that race track is what we call it, right? Yeah. Outside. Yeah. The outside of the perimeters of the store and get that value increase our brand. Yeah. To protect all of that, to get all the processes and the program straight to get the education down to the. Speaker 1 The racetrack. The racetrack. Speaker 3 Frontline team members that really need it is, is certainly a challenge, but one that that we deal with and contend with every day. Speaker 1 I have to tell you I've had a couple of situations recently where some of my grad students were talking about grocery stores, and one of them was saying how a she was binge watching the Brady Bunch and she's like, why did Alice always go to get to the butcher to get meat? Why didn't she just, like, pick it up from? I'm like, well, you know. Speaker OK. Speaker 1 That's the way you see meat at the store today is not the way you used to get it back in the back in the day. And I had another student who was saying he was watching some of those Disney movies like when Kurt Russell was young and and there was that movie, the Gus, where there the, the the donkey goes through the grocery store and they're like, oh, the the produce aisles were huge and and and I'm like, well, you know, we didn't have commercially packaged goods and ready to eat. Speaker 3 A little different. Speaker 1 Foods like, hey, you had a lot more, you know, raw ingredients and and canned and and just the idea of the kinds of foods or the ways that foods are sold at the grocery stores that has evolved over. Have. The last few decades. Speaker 3 Immensely in in the way that they order them the way they shop them and. The way they receive them. So everyone has a curbside pickup, right? Yeah. They sometimes people don't even come in the stores anymore, right? They're shopping from mobile. Yes. They come into your store, they shop your store, but someone else is purchasing it and taking it to them to ensure that that, that chain, that cold chain and that food safety process continues all the way to. Speaker 1 Yeah, you have. You have third party shoppers. Speaker 3 To the end consumer. Speaker 1 Do you have? Yeah. Speaker 3 So many different challenges. Speaker 2 Ohh, do you have food delivered? Of course. Really I don't have a car. We went through this. Speaker 1 That's right. Last episode we talked about how she doesn't have a car in New York City. That's hilarious. Speaker 2 New York City. Speaker 3 That that's also something to contend with is the geography. Yeah. Of where you are. The How you live. You know what type of lifestyle you live. Do you have kids? Are you an older generation that maybe doesn't have? Speaker Hold on. Speaker 3 Process and that's one great thing that I get to work on in our company too is to work with our community partners and create different access. We have a mobile market that's a driving grocery store on wheels with refrigeration and smart sense alarms. Speaker 2 5 how? Speaker 3 To manage our. Chain that we can go into into some underserved communities and get fresh produce, fresh meats and products and provide them a safe food in these areas that don't have a lot of access. Speaker That's brilliant. Speaker 1 So let's come back to some of these factors here. You know, I like to look at leadership and then food safety as an ideal situation, not an ideal condition, but ideal situation is that a leader works. Such that they're leading with intention. They can't predict everything, but you're trying to be predictive. You're trying to be proactive. And I would imagine trying to be proactive in food safety within the retail establishment within that Community would be to not only understand the variabilities of the products you're selling, but of the clientele of you were just mentioning geographic geography, the age, the socioeconomic status, the intention of why they're buying these things, what are some of the things that go into. That that bigger equation when you try to funnel all this down into how do we be proactive? Speaker 3 So I'm glad you brought. We don't want to be a reactive approach, right? Obviously you're going to have that situation here and there. You have to react to situations that occur, but being proactive is going to reduce the amount of reactivity that you have to certain situations. But being proactive in a grocery store means partnering. Partnering with our sales team, our merchandising teams, what's coming right, attending shows like this or other food shows, understanding what's on the horizon, getting feedback from our customers, what are they demanding, what are they want out of us that we can then create programs, provide them a safe quality. Product. So I think in our situation we have the awesome responsibility of of partnering with. Not only the stores, but our corporate staff to make sure that we're part of that business and engrain our feed safety culture into their practices. That way when they go live to market, all of those processes and practices, all the training that our team members. Need are all. Folded into one nice program and we can push that out to the stores coach. Teach, train and get the fruits of all the labor you often see, sometimes merchandisers. You know. Sales. They're pushing that forward. Maybe they forget about food safety, right. And then you run into an issue where you have to react, then all intentions are good. We need to sell product, we need to make safe products, but really having those connections with the business teams really helps to ensure that you're you're putting out a final product that's going to be safe for everyone. Speaker 1 Well, I would imagine too that it's kind of seen as heart of what a shopper would see as the value when they're seeing the price tag when they're seeing the brand, when they're seeing the colors, when they're seeing the pictures, whatever it is, that is part of the, hey, see me, buy me. Yeah, buy this. Now buy this size by this quantity or whatever they want to see the value of food. Waiting. It's hard to it's hard to show. Speaker 3 That it's very hard to show the value of food safety. If you look at a P&L, you're not going to see food safety on that line, right. But it absolutely impacts that line, whether it be through recalls, whether it be through mishaps, social media posting, right, any any day could be your best day or your worst day. But planning ahead, being proactive. Having those relationships should reduce that, which then reduces the overall spend when it comes to to incidents that occur. Speaker 1 I did a survey many, many years ago and you probably know the answer, so I'm going to ask you, you know, what the number one thing people when they're shopping at a grocery store, look for in terms of food safety. Yeah, sounds like a family feud. Speaker 2 Something. Speaker 1 Yeah, everyone on the board, right? Speaker 2 And then general person or something around the deli. Speaker 1 The general person. We're on the delink, I'm sure that's up there. That's probably #5 on the family feud list. It's not wrong, but the number one thing that came back was the dates, the dates like they used by dates sell by date, Best Buy. And of course, that's sparks. One of the biggest questions in terms of why are these different dates? Speaker 2 I would think. So now. Ohh fair yeah. Speaker 3 Yep, that's bye. Enjoy. Bye. Speaker 1 Kind of there, but the idea of spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. People want to know how long can I buy this before it's going to spoil? Yeah, right. There's a lot of focus on the idea. I want to buy something that has the farthest out date or I want to have the, the, the, the clarity or I want to have that insurance that it's going to last for a while. And of course, we're buying things in larger quantities many times. We're not buying the small thing of milk. We're buying a large gallon of milk and you gotta. Now you gotta do math. Will I consume all this milk before that date or that kind of thing? What are the ways in which the retail side of things is is trying to communicate food safety beyond just the? Speaker States. Speaker 3 I think that's rooted in education, right? So educating our team members because they're really the voice of us to the. Guest. So we have to make sure that that education is passed on to them. So this brings up a great story. Years ago when I first started with with Giant Eagle, we had a power outage to the location. Which unfortunately is our power good and and where we live we we tend to see those. But this team member was so proud of what had happened. He called me on my cell phone and said I just saved us all this food from. Risk he worked in a produce department and unfortunately he discarded quite a bit of product that was non. TCS. Didn't need to be maintained under refrigeration, maybe for quality, but we did food safety by accident, right? And I think we sometimes do that. We need that clarity going down to the front front lines that our team members. Understand what is food safety so that I could pass that along to a guest. So if a guest comes up and says. Hey, what does this date mean? They can confidently speak to the process so that they understand, but don't ask me about enjoy by Best Buy because I'm still a little confused myself. Hopefully we get some clarity soon on that but. Speaker Yeah. Speaker 1 You mentioned how you know a lot of times the the grocery store is where people go because they're going to have a family. Union or summer event or Thanksgiving? And do you know when is the most common time for refrigerators to? Speaker Oh yeah. Speaker 1 Fail. Speaker 2 Ohh around the. Speaker 1 Holidays around the holidays. Yeah, Thanksgiving classic. Those replies. Appliance repairman. Make a ton of money in those emergency service calls because the refrigerator or the OR the freezer died. And you. Know why it? Speaker 2 Dies. Well, I was either gonna say over stalking. Speaker 1 They were talking. Yeah. Because they went to the grocery store. They bought a ton of food, and they weren't thinking about where is this going to go and how is this going to fit and. And so, you know, when people are stocking up on food because they want to have this event, I would imagine they don't want their events to be remembered for all the wrong reasons. Speaker Ohh God. Speaker 1 And if they don't want their event to be remembered for all the wrong reasons, that would mean that they don't want that experience at the grocery store. Speaker 3 Or to to be remembered for all the wrong reasons and that's why I think also not only educating our team members on food safety for the customer's sake, but educating them on food safety for their own. We're really focusing on an education piece coming up here. We we know that's what drives culture is making sure that everyone has the same information. They can act on that information. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 3 So what we've been doing recently is is communicating not just to our operations team, so they could pass down safety messages to our front lines. But using an app that goes directly, it's almost like a social media platform to go directly to our team members that they can apply to and see a feed and we're supplying them information on how you're safe in your own home. Yeah. If you're going to throw a party, here's. Some. Tips you know, for the 4th of July, we're not holding a party inside on the 4th of July, right? Unless it's raining. So we need to make sure that we're safe. Not only at work. But take that home with you. Our company was based on on families and sharing food to the local communities ingrained in the communities and and whether it's a small operation like US or a a huge operation that's international. It still means that you can connect with your team members on that. That local level, yeah. And make sure that you're providing them all of that information. I think respect goes a long way, respect caring, being a a human being to everyone, right. We get caught up in policies and programs and process, which is all great and we need it. But just being there. Being respectful of the person that's there and giving them that information so that they. And succeed, I think is really. Speaker 1 Important one of the number one questions in terms of like food safety specifically beyond the the used by date is always around thawing. The big the big Turkey, like for Thanksgiving. How long do I thaw this? And it always amazes me, like when I go to a grocery store and it's like it's the day before Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Eve, as some people call it and someone's trying to buy a big old frozen Turkey. And it's like, OK. Speaker Yeah. Oh. Speaker 3 Every year. Speaker 1 Well, wait a minute. How are you going to thaw that? And I would imagine that your teams are probably well versed in terms of for this many pounds this many hours kind of a thing. Speaker 3 We make sure to educate our customers, signage, putting out bullet points during the holidays, best practices that we could pass along to our consumers, but also forecasting working with our vendors to ensure that we have enough product. We know that certain markets like to wait other markets like to plan ahead. Yeah. So getting that right size, make sure we don't have too much leftover. Yeah, right. But just that right amount that someone can offer a fresh Turkey versus a frozen. But yeah, anytime we have the holiday seasons, we always make sure to put out those those best practices to push along that information to the consumer. Speaker 1 So knowledge is definitely one tool, like in the superheroes too. Speaker Yes. Speaker 2 I feel like it's all well and good to just go through safety culture and sort of have that ethos. In place. It's not foolproof, so is there anything you kind of have that's interesting within your stores or even above store level that like keeps things safe and flowing, but also gives you kind of visibility into what's happening or reassurance? Speaker 3 Sure. So with the rise in technology, obviously. Food safety has to to grasp that, test it out, use that knowledge again. Our our company was based on customer service. Our team members have to be there for our customers. They have to, they have to sell products. We can't always rely on them 100% of the time to do a task. Speaker 2 Cool. Speaker 3 So can we take any of that away and utilize technology that we can still have that customer service piece, but also grasp that preventative measure. So with that, we have utilized smart sense in situations where, OK, we can take some temperature monitoring off as a tool, take that off their plate. So that they can provide additional. Service to our customers. And we get that information. Not only do we get that in. Information, but we get it when we want it how we want it. Whatever frequency we want it and 20. 4 hours A. Day. You know, our technology isn't going to get called away by a customer, right? They don't have to go on break. Every few hours. Speaker OK. Speaker 3 So we can rely on that technology as a metric and as a guiding light right into. The situation. So if we do have a power outage from the comfort of my home, which I don't see very often, but from the comfort of my. Them. Speaker 2 Or the comfort of Cleveland. OH. Speaker 3 I can pull up, I can pull up an app and tell temperatures in all of my cases. Speaker 1 Like right now if. Speaker 3 Right now I can. I can tell you whatever store you want and I can tell you what buy case. Speaker 1 You have you can you? You can. Pull up to yours. Speaker 3 What's happening? There's a situation occurring, and if they're responding to. Speaker 1 It now I would imagine that ideally you'd want to see like. Evidence before it's too late to act. Speaker 3 Correct, yes. And and as we improve technology, we're able to do that with better and better. I guess accuracy, right? So we first started, we had a larger window where we were getting data wasn't quite the data that we wanted to see. But overtime we've sharpened that that focus and that accuracy to ensure that yes that's not a false alarm, that's a real problem and the store is getting alerted of it and they're taking. A proactive approach so that we don't have to toss. To so we don't have a potential food safety risk on. Our hands. Speaker 1 Well, and if you look at it in terms of, yes, there's food safety and there's reputation and risk in that nature, but it's also, you know, when you were saying ohh well, we had no idea that our refrigerator unit was going to fail and we weren't taking the opportunity to track it and we didn't intervene and now we're being reactive and we have to throw out. I don't know 10,000. Pounds of meat and people wonder why are prices rising or why is it that I can't find the product I'm looking for? Why is it that my experience at my local grocery store is is is not what I'm wanting cause I can't find what I'm looking for. Perhaps leveraging technology provides value in many different categories or to? Speaker Yes. Speaker 3 Exactly. Speaker 1 Many different ways. Speaker 3 And we can also use it to help with our partnerships. So Giant Eagle loves to partner with other companies for. Solutions I think a lot of companies were looking in how how. Do. They pull the best of the best of what they do into their operations. We may not be the best of everything, but maybe someone else. Is pretty good. At it. So let's partner and combine resource, but we can use that technology now pulling a partner and now outfit them with that technology, right. And now we have this holistic view of not only our. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 3 Operations, but the operations of someone that may be in our location under our roof selling their products. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think like as you are. Aware grocery stores carry a lot of responsibility, even for issues that aren't theirs. If I buy something in Giant Eagle and there's a problem with it, I'm gonna tell everyone that I got this thing from Giant Eagle. Doesn't matter who produced it, manufactured it, it was from Giant Eagle, and then that spreads. And as we all know, bad news spreads much quicker than good news. Or, you know, I'm much more likely to tell everyone that I got. Speaker 3 Yep. Speaker 2 Bad food from Giant Eagle then say I got a lovely Turkey for my Thanksgiving dinner, and everyone should go there next year. So having that visibility into your vendors and things, anyone that supplies to you is very important as well. Speaker 3 Yeah. I'll give you a little antidote here. So our fiscal year wrapped up this past June, end of June and I had the ability to go in front of our entire operations and talk about food safety, which which shows the commitment and the commitment. I think that you need to have a food safety culture is to put someone up there just to talk about food safety, which is fantastic. Our CEO also addressed. Speaker 2 Oh yeah. Speaker 3 The store leader group and the the operations group that was in attendance and he shared a story. So we have long tenured team members which certainly helps with our. And he was speaking about he calls these these long tenured team members when they hit milestones. So I believe this woman had like a 40 year milestone. So he gave. Her a call and he's he's talking to us about the conversation. Hey, how long have you worked at that giant eagle? Expecting for an answer of five 6-7 different locations and she said Bill 1. And he said, you've been there for 40. Years. At one location at one location, she said. Yeah. And he said. That's that's your giant eagle. That's not. That's not mine. That's not art. It's yours. And it's true, it's. Speaker 2 MHM. Speaker 3 It's her giant eagle. She's been there that long. All of her kids have gone through there, her family, her friends, the community. She's a staple. Go there for her, right? Speaker Yes. Speaker 3 Those are the folks that we need to get on board right, which normally they are because they. So much about that location, the community. That whatever we say, hey. This is what you need to do to keep those people safe. I'm on board. What do I need to do right and then that person brings on all these new people that come through that door, whether they're there for a summer because they're working there. You know in college or they're there for years to come, or maybe their mom or their dad worked there and they're coming behind. To grab them to help them build that culture at that store, what I would call a subculture, I think that we've been hearing about right and then creating that food safety into them. So I think it's our responsibility is. Speaker 2 Definitely. Speaker 3 Food safety heroes to to tap into those types of people and figure out how do we sell that message to them and then support them. Through that process. Speaker 1 I have to admit I I do the cooking and I do the shopping and in my household because I'm a food safety guy and I'm a food kind of person. And so I go in my car to a grocery store. And I plan out meals and I buy, you know, ingredients to make from scratch meals. But I make it a habit. I make it as an important part of my experience to have conversations with the person on the other side of the deli counter. The person you know who wears the supervisor or the manager badge, the the person over here. Because if I can't have an opportunity to have a, you know, cordial conversation, you know, and I see these people 2. Or three times a week. Right. Then how you know? How am I gonna go? Let me ask you a food safety question. You know, kind of a thing, but most people don't have conversations with with. It's very transactional. But I I'm glad you brought this up. The idea that, you know, being part of a community. And here's someone who is not only. Part of a community in this 40 year experience at this one location, but she's also part of the city. How many families of year after year, decade after decade, have gone there and have interacted with her? As you know, someone who's connected to this evolution and they're, you know, they're with a celebration or a holiday or whatever, so communication becomes. Speaker 3 An important tool. Speaker 1 Do consumers. Talk more and ask more questions today than they did in the past. Or do you think less? Speaker 3 I think it's less asking directly in person because I think there's less that actually come in person, right? So if you look, you're. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 3 You're the type of consumer that we don't see as much. The physical in sorry was physical in person. I don't know if you make a paper shopping list. My wife still does that. She loves it, right? Walking through the aisles, selecting items. You're there for the impulse buys as well, which is great. We love that, but we get a lot of communication back from our customers in different forms. Right. So we get it through third party. Speaker The apps. Speaker 3 We get it through the Internet, we get it through a social media platform. Speaker Now. Speaker 1 A review left online. Speaker 3 Yes. So we love to get the in person feedback and we wish we'd get a little bit more of that, but it has shifted over the years to how do we communicate with our our customers to let them know what is it that we want them to buy because. We have all this information we we want you to try these new products, but how do you how do you do that to someone that's not physically in the store? So every day it's something different where we learn about these different channels to communicate with them and work with our partners to make sure that we get that messaging right the first time. Speaker 1 I would imagine this lot of assumptions about what technologies are being used. Uh, thermometers, you know? Or or? I'm sure there's also the UM. Oh, they're probably using AI robots to to scan my face, and they know exactly what I'm gonna buy before I even walk in. I don't even know what I'm gonna buy. But then what? I'm gonna buy based on my history or whatever they're going to, you know, they're going to scan me and all that kind of stuff. Sure. There's a lot of assumptions and questions about how technology is being used. How can retailers start to communicate that? Here's where the value lies. In how we are using technology for the. Speaker 3 Consumer, I know one thing that we pride ourselves on is our our advantage card. We call it right? So it's it's our club membership card and we were a very early adopter of of such a technology. And that it has continuously improved year over year and I think a lot of people try to assume the worst, right? Ohh if I scan my card, they're going to track me and all of my purchases and things like that. Speaker Yeah. Speaker 3 Yes, right to a degree, because we have all of these offerings and we want to know what what are folks buying so that we can put in other like items to get a better shopping experience. But what they don't understand from my perspective is if I have a recall and you bought that product, I need to get a hold of you as soon as possible. Right. So if you have a membership card and you scan that on your purchase. And one of those items are potentially affected days later. I can reach out to you almost instantly to let you know that, hey, this is a potential risk and this is what you need to do with that product, even if it has someone else's name on it. If they bought at our location, it's our products. Yeah. And we'll take full responsibility for that, right, when we if we're selling that product, we need to get that information out to them quickly. So that kind of technology is not customer facing. Sure necessarily it's a hidden technology and something that's very visible in their card and their membership. But something that we tend to talk about quite often. Speaker 1 Do people have you ever experienced how consumers react to? Hey, I got a notice. I got an e-mail or whatever about a recall. Speaker 3 Yeah, my mom calls me all. The time. Hey, we were affected by a a potential recall. Thanks. You know absolutely. That's why we do it. But yeah, we do get quite a bit of feedback people grateful. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 3 A lot of times they may hear it from us before they hear from a news release, you know. Speaker 2 That's OK. Yeah. Speaker 3 A press release I. Speaker 1 Would imagine that has a big impact on how people view. The leadership with the retailer in terms of the fact that they initiated, they took the step to to connect rather than it's up to you. Speaker Definite. Speaker 2 You know, if you see the notice, you see the notice if not. Speaker 1 Yeah, right. Anywhere. Yeah, yeah. And you can't make them return it or you can't make them throw it away. But you can make the effort to say at least you have that. Speaker 3 Yeah, correct. Speaker 1 Information out there as a as a shopper. Speaker 3 And I would like to think that the industry as a whole is doing that. That they're stepping up and they want to do the right thing, but that's one of our core values that giant eagle is. Is do right? Speaker 2 What I'll say is that most management and definitely food safety teams and businesses like yours want to do good and tried to do good, but kind of what we talked about in the last episode with JP having those conversations with other departments and maybe getting them to understand the value. In doing something like that can be difficult because there there's a cost to calling every customer and I can understand that while food safety teams and often businesses want to do good. Speaker 3 Absolutely yes. Speaker 2 They often don't. And you know, I have had situations where I've bought products that end up being recalled. I obviously I'm subscribed to everything, so would see it immediately, but haven't received phone calls or notifications from. Larger maybe chains than yours, and I don't know whether maybe that's the correlation. You know, you guys, you're still big, but you're not as big, so maybe it's more still that kind of mom and pop mentality and you care for your customers and you know. Customers, I think that it's a testament to giant eagle that you guys do do that and it's not, it's not something you can take for granted or assume that. Speaker 1 Everyone's doing well, you know, on that note, before we end, I want to make sure that I mentioned it doesn't matter if you are a small or regional or mom or pops or the biggest retailer out there, the food safety experience and that relationship that a consumer or. Customer has, you know, buying. That. Meat or or produce or or or frozen lasagna. Whatever it is, it is still the same exact kind of. This is the transaction. This is the experience. This is the shopping no one says. Ohh it's a smaller store there for, you know, food safety should. Yeah. It's it's fine. It's OK. They don't have to be as safe or whatever or it's a smaller store. It's a smaller regional brand or whatever. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 1 So it's going to make it such as not as important of a family get together for the holidays at my house, right? They like they wanna trust. Yeah, they wanna trust whether you're the mom and pop or the regional or the national or international chain. And that that every experience, every purchase, every shopping. Speaker 2 No way. Speaker 1 Experience. Uh. It is going to end such that there is not only the satisfaction of the user experience and they the number one question you could ask me check out at the cash register. Did you find everything you're looking for, but that nothing they buy is going to do harm to harm. That's a great way of putting it do no harm. And I imagine that that's going to be a common message you got to communicate through your entire team. Speaker 3 Yeah. Do no harm. Speaker 1 Whether it's the 17 year old we're in a summer job or the 40 years on the job at this one location person who I would assume as a supervisor of some sort, that's got to. Be a consistent message it is and not only. Speaker 3 Downward but upward, right? So we've talked a lot about having conversations with store level team members, but also for those organizations that may be struggling with the communication upwards is showing them that what we're about is doing no harm. Right. And having those difficult conversations, I know on your previous episode talking about proactive versus reactive and the cost of food safety issues, how putting a little bit of cost into well, what may seem like a lot of cost at first into a proactive approach is going to save you. Tenfold. Instead of being reactive. Speaker 1 Sometimes it's hard to convey that message of we need to do this well. That's going to be expensive and we don't even know if this is going to be an issue. So why are we investing in this? Well? Because we know that if we don't do this. It's going to cost us this much or that this can can play out. It's kind of like that idea of we always look at option A&B, but do we ever look at the option of what happens if we don't do any option? What kind of a situation is that going to put us in and here not only are we talking about public health, we could talk about. Economics, we talk about brand reputation. I don't even know how you put a price tag on that, but we also talk. Speaker Hey. Speaker 1 About. People's jobs. There's a lot of different areas of talking about in terms of now we need to frame this message of why we need to prioritize this, why we need to invest in this as opposed. To oh, what? Are the chances? Let's let's let's play the. Speaker 3 Odds you always say, oh, that'll never happen here, right? We share, we share the social media posts outbreaks, unfortunate events that happen in terms of food safety outbreaks with our team as real life situations of yes, it could happen here. Everyone thinks it can't happen to. Me till it does. Speaker 1 Well, Matt's giant eagle. Yeah. And that's not your superhero call sign. Speaker 2 That was his full name, Dino. Speaker 1 With a grey, the grey superhero Cape. You know, we all have different experiences no matter what city we live in. But one of those experience that that kind of connects us all is the idea of we go to the grocery store, we bring the food back to our house, and whatever we do with it is up to us. But we have that experience and I don't think you find a community. Out there that isn't rallying around the idea of here is our local retailer, big or small nationwide, or mom and pop. And probably like you said, I really like how you put it this. Speaker 2 Yeah. Yep. Speaker 3 Marie. Speaker 1 One of the first considerations that people have in terms of we're going to do this thing, we're going to have this event we're going to, we're going to do, we're going to celebrate what are. We gonna do. We're gonna go to Giant Eagle. Speaker 3 Whereas we like the same Pittsburgh giant. Speaker 1 Eagle. Ohh yeah. Good. Good to know. Did you have any last thoughts? Speaker 2 Oh, I go. Speaker 3 Some we didn't cover, I would just say that. And I know this is something that you that you hear all the time but but it is a journey. It's not a destination food safety, right. Speaker There we go. Speaker 3 And if there's a retailer out there that's not part of a food safety share group that's getting on calls regularly and sharing information, the good, the bad, the ugly, I would suggest doing it. It's it's fantastic. There's no competitive advantage when it comes to keeping people safe. I found so much, so many answers. In these groups, so I would just suggest that would be something if you're not doing right now, you probably should and continue to work. It's very difficult. Changing the culture, uh ingraining that food safety culture into the the existing culture at your organization, but to continue to fight like a superhero and don't let. Speaker 1 Down and also part of a superhero team. Yes. Yeah, I don't know. Speaker 3 Marvel or I like Marvel, DC or like. Speaker Well. Speaker 1 I think it doesn't matter when you look at the idea of when you have a kid who says that they wish that someone somewhere had done something to have, make sure that they have, you know, a healthy productive, you know, normal life or whatever. I run into this, there's a child who had a significant E coli illness, was hospitalized while hospitalized. You know, having a stroke and losing the use of one of his arms and later. Uh. Talked about it drew a picture and said that he wished someone and the food industry had done something to have prevented him from not being able to play like the other kids in the playground at school and drew a superhero in flight tights. You know, Cape, whatever. And you know the no name tag, no beard net, no hair net, no lab coat or suit coat or anything like that. But in today's world. Speaker 3 Wow. Speaker 1 DC and Marvel Superheroes, literally the person, whatever department or team at a retailer or at a food restaurant. Their role in food safety is equivalent to that of the DC or Marvel superhero. In a lot of people's lives, and I think that sometimes we have to remind our employees that, you know, you might be seeing yourself as clocking in and clocking out, doing a job or, you know, working your shift or whatever. There are people that think of, you know, they want their food to be safe. And those people who do this are the superheroes in their community. Speaker 3 You're right. And and that's why we we always say when we visit, we work for you, not the other way. Around. Speaker 1 It's great point. Yeah. Great point. Well, Matt, thank you very, very much. Appreciate the time. Speaker 3 Thank you. It.
