R&D RADIO: How to Audit a Co-Packer: The Food QA's Hermi Galstian Explains

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1:17I think the number one thing to remember is never assume. So just because they are making your product doesn't mean that they are completely responsible for your product. at the end of the day, your brand name is on the package and that's what consumers know. And if there's a recall or something like that, the information is going to be expected from the brand as well as from the manufacturer. So one of the things is ideally they have some sort of third-party audit that you can read through. Hopefully they provide the report to you. And that's not to find out like, where did they go wrong? Like, what are the problems?

1:54It's more of like, how did they resolve them? And how did they get to the other side of the issues? Because inevitably, something will go wrong, whether it's a big deal or a small deal with you. But you should know how they are going to approach that and how they're going to ultimately work with you to resolve any situation that might come up. Hey, everyone, this is Adam Yee, food scientist and podcast host of Startup CPG's R &D Radio, where we interview food scientists and product developers and what they do and how they can help you build your CPG business. Today I'm interviewing Hermie Galstian, the founder of The Food QA, where she brings together food science, business insights, and 15 years of experience to help CPG food brands navigate food safety and quality challenges.

2:41Her background spans in food processing, corporate brand, and consulting, giving her a unique perspective on translating complex requirements and navigating the frustrating hurdles brands face into practical strategies that help reduce risk, improve operations, and grow with confidence. This episode covers the difference between food safety and quality, how to vet a contract manufacturer through third-party audits like SQF and BRC, and what to watch for during an in-person factory tour such as pest control, hand washing stations, the equipment, cleanliness, and how the workers interact with you.

3:17I also talk about my own experiences doing factory tours and some of my food safety projects as well. I find food safety and quality a hugely underrated topic when it comes to making a food product. And there's a lot of things that go on in the factory floor that can make or break your product's quality. And we give you the tools to check on to make sure that your manufacturing partner is a clean one or not. Enjoy this episode with Hermie. I'm sure you'll learn a lot.

3:46Welcome back to R &D Radio with your host, Adam Yee. and I'm here with Hermie Galstian from the Food QA. Great to have you on the show. Usually we interview formulators, and basically my boss wants me to expand the content to a wider range of R &D that we can kind of explore. And I think what is something that we don't really talk about, I feel, in the startup community is food safety and quality. So I'm glad to have you on to kind of give, like, founders and brands, like, some insight on what to look for in a food safety and quality point of view. Yep. Usually we're kind of like the last group that gets into these things.

4:24So it's always a positive when we're involved from the beginning. Definitely. So first, I feel like this is the most common question you get all the time. What's the difference between food safety and quality? Yeah, so they're definitely related. But food safety is basically the safety of the food. If you eat it, is it going to make you sick or cause an injury or any host of issues. And then the quality is more like the consistency. So does it look the way it's supposed to? Does it taste the way it's supposed to? And more of your brand is involved with that. So not to say food safety isn't. So with food safety, obviously, if your product isn't safe, that's not good for your brand.

5:01But quality is more what differentiates your product from the others. Could you give me an example of like a product that has compromise in food safety versus of the product that has compromised in quality? So food safety would be something like an allergen cross contact. So obviously, if you have a peanut free product, then it has peanuts in there. That's not safe. Or there's some sort of microbiological contamination, like a bacteria that's going to make people sick. So that would be food safety. And then quality would be we put too much or too little of a certain ingredient that's going to alter the flavor.

5:36And it's not going to taste like your product anymore, whether that's going to make it way too sweet or way too bitter, or it just looks completely different if your cookies are burned, for example. Yeah. And usually you get a lot of customer complaints with quality, right? Like you get like an influx. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. It tastes weird or it tastes funny or the texture is not right. Right. Yeah. So you want that consistent in your product. And then food safety, I think what's most topical is that what explosive diarrhea lettuce thing that's going on right now, the psychospora, right? Yep.

6:05That's not fun for anybody. Nah, definitely not. So, Hermie, I want to know a little bit about your history. How did you get involved in this? How? And just would love to hear more about kind of your expertise in the field. Yeah. So, how I got involved is actually kind of funny. I was actually a business major and I was on my way to law school. And then I ended up not doing that, working and recruiting in HR for a bit. And then I became a vegetarian, which I'm not anymore. But while I was a vegetarian, I was training to run a marathon. And so I started exploring how to eat as a vegetarian to prepare to run a marathon and got interested in food in that way and then decided to just do a 180, go back to school, learn food science, got my master's degree, and then worked in the field for the last 15 years.

6:56Wow, that's super cool. So you got a degree in food science to study food safety and quality, right? And I think when people hear the word food science, they don't really think that's a huge component of the curriculum, right? Yes. So actually, at the time when I was there, my university didn't have a food science master's program. They only had nutrition and dietetics. So we kind of created it with my advisor. So it was a little different in that sense. But yeah, the thing I learned the most from were my internships, though. Cool. And where were those at? So I did an internship, first a culinary internship at a farmer's market restaurant that only sourced their ingredients from the farmer's market.

7:38So that was interesting. And then after that, I was an intern at a vegan food company and I was doing R &D and quality. And then at the end of my internship, they were going to hire me and they're like, which one are you interested in, R &D or quality? And I was like, you know what? I really like forms. So I went into quality. I'm sure I'm like in the one person who chose that side, but I really enjoy it. Yeah, I think both are interesting and both are really stable jobs, honestly. Like, I think they're always something you need. I feel like you're like, I don't want to say police person, firefighter, maybe in a sense.

8:15Like if something is in trouble, you have to be the one on call, right? Yeah. And I've personally done a food safety projects and I don't like them personally because they had to deal with the FDA and to deal with all the traceability and the forms and all that. But in general, I understand why it's super useful. And if you have the right, I think, mindset and personality, it's a really, really good field. Yeah, I really enjoy it. And you work hand in hand with every single department, especially with R &D. There's a lot of crossover. There's a lot of working together, starting from the formulation all the way until the product is coming out and how we're packaging it and all that stuff.

8:50So there's a lot of intertwining of that. And then going back to your comment about like, we're the police, sometimes it is definitely seen that way. But my goal has always been to not make that the case and to make it more of a collaborative approach. And basically, we're all working towards the same goal. We want to sell products, we want them to be safe, and we want our brands to thrive. So look at your history, your work history. You spent a decade in Danone, which is a huge company. And you also done a few smaller companies, right? So I'd love to hear like the importance of food safety in each of those kind of the bigger companies and the smaller companies.

9:27Yeah, it actually wasn't a decade in Danone. So the company I was working for was purchased by Danone. So it was an acquisition. So I didn't end up working with Danone for a couple of years. So yeah, I started out with the vegan food company. It's a brand called Follow Your Heart. That's still around. And I started again, like I said, as an intern. And then I worked my way up and did all the food safety, quality, regulatory, and then into the transition with Danone. So it was very interesting to see how our processes were integrated and then vice versa. So after that, I went to a brand that only worked with Comans.

10:06So it was nice to be also on the other side, on the brand side versus just on the facility side. Okay. So I guess what are some common things you notice about quality systems and food safety as you work with one startup, follow your heart that then got sold. And then also like other situations where it sounds like you are building a plant or you are talking to plants and trying to figure stuff out. I'd love to hear the general process of essentially making sure a manufacturing plant is up to speed and up to quality. Yeah, definitely. I've been actually trying to come up with a good acronym to make it easy for people to remember.

10:45I'm working on a few. I have a few options. So the first thing is, ideally, you have a referral. So if you know somebody who's worked with them, that's going to be a good indicator. And it's ideally not somebody who's related to them because that might be a little biased. That happens often for some reason. It does. And it could work out, but you just have to do your due diligence. I think the number one thing to remember is never assume. So just because they are making your product doesn't mean that they are completely responsible for your product. At the end of the day, your brand name is on the package and that's what consumers know.

11:20And if there's a recall or something like that, the information is going to be expected from the brand as well as from the manufacturer. Yeah. So one of the things is ideally they have some sort of third-party audit that you can read through. Hopefully they provide the report to you. And that's not to find out like, where did they go wrong? Like, what are the problems? It's more of like, how did they resolve them? And how did they get to the other side of the issues? Because inevitably, something will go wrong, whether it's a big deal or a small deal with you. But you should know how they are going to approach that and how they're going to ultimately work with you to resolve any situation that might come up.

12:01So let's talk about third third-party audits, because this is really important, and there's a lot of acronyms for third-party audits. I'd love to hear kind of generally what you find to be either trusting third-party audits or let's say because a lot of the brands are debating on price, right? And generally someone who's like SKF certified is a little bit more expensive, right? But they have that audit with them. I'd love for you to go over the value of a third-party audit. And I think there's a tier list for third-party audits as well and why kind of retailers might want that. Yeah. So there are different, obviously, types of audits and different ones are used in different situations.

12:37Some are better for, let's say, shipping. If you're distributing worldwide, sometimes they prefer BRC. And then it could also be dependent on your customers. So some distributors and customers require, let's say, SQF. And then there's levels to SQF, too. So for me, as long as it's some sort of GFSI audit. And what does that mean? So GFSI is Global Food Safety Initiative. And then under that, there are different audits like the BRC and the SQF and others. So it's good to have their certificate, which will tell you whether they passed or not. And then it's also good to have their audit report, ideally, so you can see what issues came up and what were the areas of concern.

13:19So either you can pay special attention to it, or you can just ask them more about that topic. Got it. So what if they don't have these eyes or don't want to give them to you? Yeah, that does happen. So ideally, you can go in there and look at the place yourself. I feel like most people should be doing that anyway. It's always good to see everything with your own eyes and see what's going on because a lot of things you can read about, you can look at pictures even, but it's never going to be the same as when you're actually there. So I would say definitely visit if you can have a consultant or somebody, if you don't have somebody on your team who can do this, have somebody from the outside go in and do a supplier audit for you.

14:00For sure. And so I think if they don't allow an audit or to give you audit information or they don't allow you to towards, there's something up, right? Yeah, I mean, there are other things you could do. There are a lot of like smaller operators out there that just don't have the resources for these things. So you can hopefully at that point just have conversations and ask for documents and like, what is your recall plan? Can you trace our ingredients in case there's a problem with them? What tests do you perform on our products? What risks do you see with our ingredients or our processes? And how do you control these hazards?

14:35So these are some questions that you can ask to put your own mind at ease and see if they actually know what they're doing and if they're a good partner for you. Definitely, for sure. Sometimes my clients, they do their own like manufacturing search. And sometimes the conversations that I hear from them are quite odd, so to say, because they find callbackers through Google searches, kind of middle of nowhere areas. So I kind of think this is more common than you think to like, for a lot, some of the callbackers that hide information. I don't think that's a good business, essentially, right? Yeah, you really do want that transparency for sure, especially if this is going to be a longer term relationship, which hopefully it is because it does cost time and money and other resources to change contract manufacturers as well.

15:20So you do want that transparency. You do want somebody who is easy to talk to and listens to you because they are your partner in this and they do hold part of your brand reputation in their hands. For sure. And let's talk about this plant tour then, because I think that's really important. You're going to this factory and they are opening their doors to you for you to vet. And I think every manufacturer should give you a factory tour at the end of the day. Yeah, you don't have to call it an audit. Okay. Yeah, tour might be nice and nicer, right? Yeah, tour is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you want to look for in this tour?

15:56I think one example is a lot of honors look at corners, or I think you mentioned, what are they spraying stuff with, right? I love to hear just generally, if you were to do a factory tour and to look around, what would you generally want to see in a good manufacturing plant? Yeah, there's definitely levels to it. Just looking at those corners and hotspots is one way, and that's good too. So hopefully, they're not just keeping you on the outside of the processing zones. You're not just like looking through a doorway or through a window, which I know some plants make you do that. And you can actually walk the floor and hopefully, you know, if they're trying your product on the line, you can actually see how it's going down the line and how they're adding the ingredients and how they're mixing and all these things.

16:43So definitely first, when you arrive, how are they letting you in? Are the doors just open? Do they make you sign anything? Can anybody have access to their ingredients? Like, can anybody go in and see what the ingredients are? Can they see your formula that they have and they're supposed to keep safe and then it's just accessible for anybody? So first is that safety and security part of it. That's important. Yeah. Yeah. And then are the The door is being propped open so that people or animals can walk in. Are there little holes under the door? Sometimes you could see the sunlight shine through.

17:20You don't want that. If you can see the sunlight, then that means animals can get in. And they can squeeze in through tiny little gaps too. Yes, yes. I've had an audit before and we got caught. Actually, funny, I know this is embarrassing, but one of the audits that I was in charge of, there was a cat that walked in and I was like, oh my God. You can't claim the cat is the pest control. It's getting the mice. And the mice are there getting the roaches. There you go. There you go. Luckily, we had, you know, this was like a third party, like kind of pre-audit before the audit, so to say. But that is something like, OK, then you have to investigate where this cat come from.

17:59Why is there a cat here? We found them in the perimeters. And so we had their pest control team put anti-cat bait or something like that to get the cats going away. It's just rats are the same. birds can crawl through holes yep and so you have to net them so it's just like it is the pest control part is actually like a really really important thing to like observe oh yeah in a plant i think and it's pretty easy a lot of them have pet boxes right in the perimeter like eco lab or something like that that's important to kind of see what kind of resources they're investing in a plant right yeah and pest control can also go hand in hand with sanitation so if you have spills if you have residue of product that was made two days ago just sitting there that's going to attract all sorts of animals yeah like still water right yeah yeah just there's so many things in the plant right and so what else do you kind of recommend when someone like walks through and does a tour should they ask certain questions like during the tour so to say i'd love to hear just what you generally observed one thing i'll say is look up a lot of people forget to look up that's true Actually, yeah, that's very true.

19:04Yeah, you'll see, you might see cobwebs. You might see things dangling by like a hair that could fall in, especially if it's above food products. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely questions you should be asking. You should be talking. Hopefully there are team members there on the floor and see how they receive you. Do they make eye contact? Do they acknowledge the presence of somebody who doesn't work there? so you want them to notice when there's a non-employee present because if it's not you it could be somebody else who is not like a good guy that's true yeah you want them to notice that hey somebody's here so i always try to like make eye contact and say hello and see how that is going and and you want people who hopefully like if they see a problem they're not afraid to speak up.

19:51And that tells you a lot about the food safety culture of that facility, that people are noticing issues and they're speaking up about it. You don't want them to just like try to hide things. Yeah. And I think on that note with employees, like, you know, we as food scientists understand like proper hygiene and washing your hands and hairnets and sometimes smocks are important to do, right? And you want to get a feel of that as well for the employees if they're properly trained, right oh yeah i've been in places when they're like oh it's okay you don't have to wear the thing or put on the hairnet oh really the hairnet and i'll be like wait no you should apply the rule to everybody like don't treat we're not special like even the owner of the facility should be following all the rules ideally exactly yeah yeah i do not sell owners who don't follow the rules but yeah i think that's like really important right because even though maybe food scientists and QA people, like we have very strict rules about like proper hygiene, good manufacturing practices, right?

20:49And I think that needs to kind of follow through. And it is, well, at least when I've noticed a lot of food safety projects, it is a good plant when you teach like the manufacturing workers good hygiene, right? Yes. So I don't like seeing the hand wash station blocked by boxes or a dolly or something because that just tells me there isn't frequent access there. Same thing with bathrooms. You want them to be clear and clean and well-stocked and accessible. So there should be soap in the soap dispenser. There should be hot water. So like wash your hands for more than just a few seconds and really feel like, is there actually hot water here?

21:26Yeah, for sure. That's very important. I mean, hot water goes with everything in the food facility, right? You need to not only use it to wash your hands, to kill germs, but also to clean the facility itself, right? Oh, yeah. So you want to also look at all the nooks and crannies on like the conveyor belts and tumblers and kettles and mixers and things like that, because especially like in the mixers when there's like a shaft spinning inside or like an agitator of some sort, you'll be surprised at things that get stuck on that, whether it's food residue or even like cleaning materials. It could be a piece of a towel.

21:58It could be like a plastic bristle from a brush. hopefully no like metal pieces because that'll be super dangerous yeah oh there's a metal detector right yeah yeah metal detector or x-ray ideally they have some of those and also preventing so not just like catching these foreign materials that could end up in your product but the prevention of it yeah so i like to look at plastic pieces like spatulas do they have any little pieces hanging on or like chips chips like yeah where did that piece go another question i like to ask is hey what's your pre-op check like what do you look at on the equipment before you run our product i want to know if they're looking are all the nuts and bolts in place or did one of them fall off when did it fall off during cleaning while they were making your product was has it been missing for five years and we just never replace it because we don't need it and hopefully all of that is documented somewhere as well.

22:55Yeah, I would say just in the background, all factories have to do a food safety plan for manufacturing food. And generally that includes all of those processes, all of those kind of risk factors all at once. So this is a standard practice all factories should be doing when they're making food, right? Yes, yes. So these are all the processes that they should have in place to prevent the issues. Yeah, we just want I hear some insider like info that can help brands with whatever, right? And food safety is a really important thing. And so is quality, right? Yeah. So one thing I like to look at fairly closely is ingredients.

23:30Okay. So whether you're supplying the ingredients as the brand or your manufacturer is sourcing and purchasing those for you and where they're being stored, are they being stored on site? And so I like to really look into that. How are they receiving those ingredients? Are they making sure that it is actually the ingredient that you want? Are they getting it from the suppliers that you chose? Because sometimes, oh, it wasn't available at your preferred supplier, so we just got it from somewhere else. But we don't realize often that could change a lot. For example, if you have, let's say, a product for a sensitive population or like an allergen issue, you want to make sure that the ingredient supplier has been vetted according to your brand standards before it's substituted in your product because we don't know how that could affect the safety or quality of the product.

24:22Yeah, 100 % agree with that. And in terms of like a documentation per ingredient, like what do you generally ask for as a quality, right? So we usually ask for a specification sheet, nutritional facts, nutrition label. I know some people like to ask for country of origin. I'd love to hear like, are there any other documents that you think are really important when it comes to like making a food product yeah so it's gonna depend on your product and what you're claiming yeah that's true let's not forget about that that's very true yeah yeah yeah that's a whole other story yeah that's a whole other podcast and then what other certifications you're getting is your product can be non-gmo certified is it gonna be kosher is it gonna be organic is it gonna be seed oil free i didn't prove that There's a trend for you.

25:06Yeah, yeah. I hear that a lot. Yeah, there's a certification now for that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's one non-ultra process. Yes, yes. That's another one. And then healthy. What is the definition of healthy? So making sure all of your ingredients will support the claims or certifications you're making for your product, as well as microbiological. Sometimes we see just like a general thing, but sometimes I want to see specifically addressing the risks of your ingredient, of your product as a whole, and of the way you're packaging and selling it. So these different risk factors will affect what you're testing on the ingredients.

25:42So you might want to test listeria, salmonella, like more pathogens. Yeah. Well, you know, this is an interesting thing. So generally, most ingredients have a certificate of analysis, right? Like a snapshot per batch. And sometimes they list something called APC count or aerobic plate count. But sometimes I think the numbers can scare a lot of brands, for instance, because the number can be big. And if the powder, maybe it's okay for it to be big. I'd love to hear some advice on that, I guess you'd say. Yeah. So everything's going to be based on risk, hopefully. So it depends if your product has a kill step or not.

26:18Are you heating it up? Are those numbers supposed to go down or are they supposed to stay up? What is considered safe for that ingredient and your product specifically? And what is considered safe for who you're feeding. So if you're making products for children or if you're making products that you market to people who have compromised immune systems. So everything is relative. So I hate to be one of those people who are like, it depends. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say that. I was going to make a joke about that. Every food safety consultant I've ever talked to has literally the word like locked and loaded.