Top 5 food safety questions to ask your food and drink suppliers.

Do you have any food or drink suppliers?

Did you pre qualify your food and drink suppliers before you placed your first order? If so, was your due diligence only about finance or did you find out about their food safety too?

Here are the top 5 food safety questions to ask your food and drink suppliers before you work with them.

Do you have a HACCP plan?

You have a HACCP plan or study and have risk assessed the food safety risks in your business. (You do have one, don’t you?) Has your new supplier?

Can we agree a Specification?

Have you agreed a specification with your supplier so that you both understand the quality that you are expecting? In a previous role, I was benchmarking chocolate gateaux. The range of 8 portion gateaux that we received was incredible. The specification was for portion size and price only. 

Agree what you are buying and document it. 

What is your Allergen policy?

How are allergens handled at your site? Are there any allergens that are excluded? How do they monitor this?

Who are your emergency contacts?

Who can I contact out of hours if I find a problem with one of your products?

Make sure that they know how to contact you too, in the case of a problem, such as a recall.

Do you have any Accreditations?

Do they have any food safety accreditations? These are usually audited by independent third party organizations and reviewed regularly.