SAFETY Culture Introducing the first, global food safety maturity model for convenience stores. BY CHRIS BLASINSKY
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he convenience industry’s present and future is food. Although the broad foodservice category took a hit in 2020 due to pandemic-related restrictions, for the past two decades foodservice has been a fast-growing category within the convenience store channel. More than 60% of the category is prepared food, which saw a 7.4% drop in sales in 2020, according to NACS State of the Industry data. Commissary, which is largely prepackaged foods and the only foodservice category with sales growth during the tumultuous second quarter of 2020, ended the year with 13.3% category sales contribution. These products conveyed a sense of confidence among c-store shoppers as safety and wellness shifted shopper behaviors. With new methods of getting product to consumers quickly and safely—drive-thru, curbside CONVENIENCE.ORG
pickup and delivery, for a few examples—convenience retailers that are serious about foodservice as a profit center should be consistently reviewing their food safety procedures, and that includes embedding food safety culture into an already-established company culture. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating and sustaining an effective food safety culture, there is a shared goal: protecting public health. BUILDING THE MODEL After listening to several convenience retailers discuss how they measure their food safety maturity, NACS began working with Dr. Lone Jespersen, founder and principal of Cultivate, in 2020. Jespersen held the Six Sigma leadership role at Canadian-based Maple Leaf Foods, when in 2008, a Listeria outbreak took the lives of 23 Canadians. From that point until 2015, her focus became
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