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Mikkel Svold (00:08):
Hygienic design is often some kind of an afterthought. It's a little bit of an add-on. And we've heard it many times in this podcast that hygienic design is something that comes after the actual design of the equipment or of the building. And that is a shame because sometimes it leaves a lot of money on the table. So today we're actually trying to build the business case for hygienic design by taking you into some of the details and some of the reasons why you should think of hygienic design as a foundational principle when you're designing constructions for your food production or when you're designing equipment.

(00:46):
Hello and welcome to Behind Clean Lines. I'm Mikkel Svold, and today I'm joined by the good Jennifer Crandall, who is the CEO of Safe Food En route. And Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer Crandall (00:57):
Thank you. It's so exciting to be here.

Mikkel Svold (00:59):
And I think just to kind of get our listeners acquainted with you, what is it that safe food route does?

Jennifer Crandall (01:07):
So we are a food safety consulting company. Our goal is to make corporate level food safety programs accessible to small and mid-sized businesses. And we're leveling that playing field so that they get that similar support that a large corporation would give to their companies through corporate programs such as a corporate food technology team or high level engineering maintenance thoughts. So very similar to what we're discussing today on trying to make sure that that hygienic design concept is in early stage conversations as through a food safety culture that we would be helping assist.

Mikkel Svold (01:49):
Yeah. So before turning on the mics, we talked about the working title of this episode, so to say, is how to turn Hygienics into profits. And I think for both small and medium-sized companies, but also for the bigger food corporations out there, it's interesting I think to know why is this important? Why is the financial bit of hygienic design so important?

Jennifer Crandall (02:17):
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of the barriers that we run into with hygienic design, and a lot of the discussion that we are going to be providing to the audience, it is centered around the idea of if you don't do it in the front, then you're probably going to have to do something at the back end of the design to fix the problem. So it's kind of like measure twice, cut once concept, and you want to make sure that it's all included in those conversations very early in capital investment. A lot of times the decision makers that are at the table at those do not include somebody that has the knowledge and awareness of what hygienic design can cause, what hazards might surface after they start producing without that design in mind. So that is a big part of it.

Mikkel Svold (03:15):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious to know, how did you come about being or founding the company and how did you come about being so engaged in this specific area with SMEs?

Jennifer Crandall (03:32):
Yeah, so I have 20 years background in the industry prior to finding my business. So technically I have 28 years now. But the first, let's see, the first eight years of my background, I was in manufacturing. I was a quality control, quality assurance manager production. So I had a lot of different roles in that space. And I did not have the training as an early food professional to fully understand some of these hiccups that might happen. And I've seen a couple of instances where the hygienic design or even just sanitary hygienic controls during construction can impact in a very costly way, as you're moving through the construction phases. And I've also seen it now, so the next 12 years I was at a corporate company, Kroger company, which is a US-based grocery retailer, but they own several manufacturing plants and they purchase ginormous amounts of food and sell to the consumer.

(04:38):
So I was in charge of a lot with the vendors there, and so I managed more of their certifications and stuff. So I was more high level strategic, but you could still see the mistakes unfold in recalls. And so all of this is trying to prevent those from happening. So whether it's hygienic design and equipment or their programs and processes that they have in place, we're trying to prevent things from happening. I have a couple of examples.

(05:07):
Like I said, there was one, when I was in my early manufacturing days, I remember having to calculate how much plastic was lost in a blow mold process because the electrical crew was working above the grinder and wire got into our system, and then it was coming out the blow molds and blowing out big holes in our gallon jugs. And so I had to do some calculation for that.

(05:35):
That was very costly and it was very costly for the electrical company because we pushed it right back onto them as a manufacturing company. So this is one of the big ways.

(05:45):
I've also seen where somebody didn't think about the location of drains in an early construction project. And drains are so important in certain types of environments to make sure that you can wash the flooring properly, the equipment properly, and have very good locations for it, but it's also to minimize contamination. And they had not put drains close enough together. And so we ended up having to tear up the floor digging up all that-

Mikkel Svold (06:18):
Off the production?

Jennifer Crandall (06:19):
Off the production.

Mikkel Svold (06:20):
Had begun.

Jennifer Crandall (06:21):
Yeah, yeah.

Mikkel Svold (06:22):
Wow.

Jennifer Crandall (06:24):
So that's a lot of delay and time.

Mikkel Svold (06:26):
In your experience, is it quite often, because what you mentioned right now is the prime example of hygienic design being an afterthought. Being something-

Jennifer Crandall (06:36):
Exactly.

Mikkel Svold (06:37):
Not even an afterthought, but a reaction to a big problem that occurred.

Jennifer Crandall (06:41):
Yes.

Mikkel Svold (06:42):
Is it often like that or how do you see, also through the years you've been in the business, how do you see the development? Are people more aware now than there were 10 years ago?

Jennifer Crandall (06:54):
Oh, that's hard to say to be honest. So 10 years ago I was in the corporate environment, and I can say in large companies the conversations are better. They're having more people at the table for the discussion prior to purchasing equipment, prior to doing any kind of capital investment. But I do still see, in the decision and the financials, I see limited access in mid-sized companies and smaller companies of having a person at that table that has a lot of food safety background or understands that industrial engineering design and how it can impact food safety. So I definitely see... I wouldn't say that it's much better than it was 10 years ago.

Mikkel Svold (07:47):
Oh really? Okay. One thing, why do you think that the hygienic design engineers or the hygienic designers, why are they not invited in?

Jennifer Crandall (07:58):
I think it's still that afterthought. So I think it's just, "Hey, we have an idea. Let's sit at the table and start." And it could be some of the, especially with smaller companies and mid-sized companies, that's that entrepreneurial spirit where they're just excited and they're bring all the people at the table and create a meeting and then 10 months into it, they realized they should have invited somebody else to that table. So it's still a lack of awareness, lack of education of why it's important to have those people at the table early.

(08:36):
And the engineering companies, the ones that are managing the construction, are really relying on the manufacturers, the processors to tell them, this is what we need. So it's on the manufacturers, the investors, whoever's working with them to be aware, need to make sure we have these people at the table.

(08:58):
So I feel it's still a lot of just people not being aware. They don't know what they don't know. And I've said that my entire career. I was one of those for a long time, but now I understand and I'm like, no, you need to have this. You always want to have a very diverse group of people at the table. And diversity meaning somebody from engineering, somebody from production, somebody from the financial suite, somebody from engineer, I might've said engineering already, sanitation. So you want to have those people across sector at every table that is making decisions about design.

Mikkel Svold (09:39):
Now, you mentioned that this is something that the investors should actually push, they should be aware of that. Also, because when the investors say that we need design engineers is with expertise into food safety and hygienic design, we need them at the table. If the investors say that, they will actually get the invite. Whereas if they say it themselves, we need to be at the table, they may not get the invite, right?

Jennifer Crandall (10:02):
Yes.

Mikkel Svold (10:02):
And I think one problem may also be that some of those investors, they don't really, like you said, they're not aware. They don't know that it is a thing that you should consider prior to starting your building program or prior to developing your new equipment. And I think that kind of segues me into the three different overarching topics that we talked about prior to turning on the mics. Namely, this avoiding redesign being one of them. We talked about purchase ability as one of the big topics also, which obviously, from an investor point of view, is a very interesting, and then you mentioned also cumulative costs. And I think we should go through those three topics basically one by one trying to explain, also trying to draw up the business case for people out there listening on why is it actually a good idea to spend that little more money on the hygienic design before starting your building process? When we talk avoiding redesign, do you have any good examples of where you've seen that? I know you mentioned had to tear up the whole floor again to get the drainage right. What kind of consequences does that have?

Jennifer Crandall (11:28):
Well, absolutely. So I mean, one, you're triple cost, right? So you have the cost of pouring the drains right away, and then they have to tear them up, another cost, and then the third redesign plus repouring and relaying it out. So just from a financial perspective there, that's a huge cost. But it also, some of the less tangible ones, however, they would be very tangible if you have a specific date you needed to start your production by.

(12:02):
So the example that I saw, it delayed production by probably six or eight weeks on being able to start. So they started and then they realized they had this incorrect, and then they were getting positive hits, and we'll talk about that on the accumulative cause, but they were getting positive hits on pathogenic bacteria on the floor. So then we had a different issue that we had to solve, which also delayed production. But you have that with lost inventory because you're going to now assume since I've had a negative test to a positive test on that bacteria, all of a sudden I now am opening the door of I have inventory I need to throw away, or I need to test it to make sure that it's okay to sell. And then you have potential, one of the bigger ones that I think would really get people's attention is you potentially miss the go to market date, which can cause you to lose your shelf space if you're in a finished product environment that's selling to a grocery retailer. Because if you're a month late, they don't want to have empty shelves. And they will-

Mikkel Svold (13:07):
Of course not.

Jennifer Crandall (13:08):
They'll switch. They'll switch suppliers right on you. So that's a breach of contact to them.

Mikkel Svold (13:15):
And I mean, I have not thought about that. That is such a big consequence.

Jennifer Crandall (13:20):
Mm-hmm.

Mikkel Svold (13:20):
Because, that means that it's not just the immediate money out the window, of money down the drain to be funny about it.

Jennifer Crandall (13:27):
Literally. Yeah.

Mikkel Svold (13:30):
But it's also future money coming in. It's revenue that you will then not get. And then you have to then win back those shelf meters, which is obviously not easy.

Jennifer Crandall (13:45):
No, I mean, it's hard enough. If you're a new company trying to come into a grocery retailer from that buying perspective, you have to win their trust. And so you need to come out of the gate, right? Doing everything. If you have one glitch that can... I mean even a company who has been working with a supplier that's been working with a grocery retailer for a long period of time, those kind of glitches can create mistrust and then eventually could dissolve your relationship if you have too many happening. So you trust is so big in that relationship. And now there's so much financial review from the large grocery and large distributor companies, distribution companies, those companies have so much financial impact that they will cut people who are costing them, and they won't think twice.

Mikkel Svold (14:41):
And also when you are smaller or medium-sized player in this market, if you lose those shelf meters to someone much more established to one of the massive companies, you give them back control over the category, right?

Jennifer Crandall (14:59):
Yep.

Mikkel Svold (14:59):
So actually it's an even harder blow to you than it would be if it was the big player, right?

Jennifer Crandall (15:04):
That's right. That's right.

Mikkel Svold (15:06):
Simply because they control the category, so they can just put some other substitute-

Jennifer Crandall (15:13):
Absolutely.

Mikkel Svold (15:14):
On that piece of shelf, right?

Jennifer Crandall (15:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mikkel Svold (15:16):
Whereas if you are a newcomer.

Jennifer Crandall (15:18):
So then the competition's getting swayed. Oh my goodness. Yeah, the competition being swayed. So then the pricing's getting swayed and the consumer's building more trust with that brand. There's a lot of ripple that could happen in that situation.

Mikkel Svold (15:32):
Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer Crandall (15:33):
Delay start time and missing shelf, the go-to-market date, those could be detrimental to your business.

Mikkel Svold (15:42):
That could be for, if I'm to see it from the investor point of view, that could be not only do I have to have money up my pocket to redesign and reinstall, reconstruct, not only that, also, I may lose my entire investment. I may lose the whole business case because suddenly we don't have anyone to take our products.

Jennifer Crandall (16:07):
Yes. Yes.

Mikkel Svold (16:08):
Wow. Wow. And I think that actually also leads quite nicely into the notion of purchasability. We laughed a little bit about this word, but it somehow covers what it is that we mean. Can you maybe try and explain what is it that we mean with the notion of purchasability? Can't even say it right.

Jennifer Crandall (16:25):
I know it's such a mouthful. I mean, some of the things that we talked about before, and I still think it's very relevant. So my company, we do the food safety due diligence work whenever there's a merger and acquisition. For those that are not familiar with that process, it's very similar to when you're buying a home and somebody comes in and does a home inspection.

(16:49):
These assessments are done in the instance of here's your hazards, here's the risk that it might impact you long-term. The main goal is just to communicate to the investor, or depending on what side you're on of the deal, you might be on the buy side, you might be on the sell side, but the idea is to inform them what kind of risks you have to the product or to the long-term food safety from our perspective. But there are also people doing this in the operations piece. There's people reviewing the equipment, so they're looking at efficiencies, they're looking at sustainability initiatives, and then my company's looking at that food safety. That all helps to secure funding. So once the banker investor knows what the situation is there, they're either going to know to walk away from the deal or that they're willing to invest capital for it.

Mikkel Svold (17:46):
Yeah, because is this only relevant if are aiming to sell to your company?

Jennifer Crandall (17:52):
No.

Mikkel Svold (17:54):
This kind of due diligence?

Jennifer Crandall (17:55):
Yeah. I mean it is. It's a good place for securing funding from the bank as well. So sometimes the banks require this. So if you need a loan to be able to get some capital investment for yourself, and that's what you're working towards, you go through very similar processes with the bank, and if the bank sees that there's a risk, they're not going to give you money. So if you, have

Mikkel Svold (18:21):
You seen these kinds of incidents?

Jennifer Crandall (18:26):
Well, I think it depends on the economy and where the market is at the time. So right now, everybody's being really careful with their money. So bankers are pulling out of investments right now. So that's just the current situation where they start the process and then the buyer either decides, I'm not ready to buy. The seller might do the same thing, but the banks also are kind of playing in this space. So there's a little bit of that. And I believe that the risk would be a high reason for that. That would be one of the reasons that they back out is, well, it's too risky. I'm not going to spend my time on it, whatever that risk might be, food safety being included in it. So I've walked through facilities that, or me or my team has walked through facilities that have egregious food safety concerns and companies walk away from it completely during the investment process. So I can say that if you don't have the proper food safety design, the proper food safety culture, the investor will walk or the bank might walk.

Mikkel Svold (19:35):
I know we've had quite a few episodes on what it takes to have a hygienically designed food plant, but I want to ask you also, what is it that you specifically look for? Because you can't look in every crook and cranny of the production for, or can you? I don't know, but I mean there must be some main, these needs to be in order otherwise back out.

Jennifer Crandall (20:04):
Yeah, I mean, from a food safety perspective on diligence, we look at several different factors. It's very similar to how we would approach a consulting situation. We go in and review, what kind of certifications do you have. There's a lot of paperwork, we'll review their micro counts to see if they, are they handling their environmental monitoring program well enough? Where are they swabbing and are they getting hits on their swabs and what are they doing about those hits? So when you look at hygienic design, those are very related to what's going on in the facility. So if you have high counts sanitation, post-sanitation testing, and there's still high counts, or if you have high counts in your product going through the facility, and it might be like what we call aerobic plate count or specific plate count. So you might see SPC or APC on the count for the micro.

(21:07):
That's not necessarily something that'll make you sick, but it's definitely telling you something's wrong because you're not getting a clean product, you're not getting your processes not removing that bacteria well enough out of the finished product. So that can be quality issues. So when I look at it from a liquid perspective, from liquid milk, liquid milk, raw milk does come in with high counts on it. That's just natural to the product. Our goal is to eliminate the pathogens through the process. And so that's why food safety people are not typically okay with raw milk sales. So we take it through a pasteurization step.

(21:46):
If your pasteurization equipment does not work, you're going to have pathogens on the other side that make people sick. That's our main goal. But you also could have quality affecting bacteria and things that impact, that could gaskets, that could be not cleaning the equipment well enough, sanitary design of the equipment. So those are things that-

Mikkel Svold (22:06):
Molds, stuff like that.

Jennifer Crandall (22:06):
Yeah. And we look at that during one of those assessments, during one of those due diligence assessments. So that's one thing. And then design, you can look, glance at a facility and say you have a lot of cracks in your floor. You have a lot of cracks in the concrete. On the walls though, there's damage. These are not easily cleanable surfaces. There's drip pans that are dripping into product lines. So you can see things like that and make pretty good assessment of you need to make adjustments to this.

Mikkel Svold (22:39):
Got you.

Jennifer Crandall (22:40):
So we see that a lot.

Mikkel Svold (22:42):
For someone like you walking through a facility, is it very easy to spot? Is it something, or do you have to look really hard?

Jennifer Crandall (22:51):
It depends on the facility, absolutely. It's easy to see. So if you have a very clean facility seeing something, and this would be like when you walk into your house, it's the same way. So if your house is very disorganized, it's going to be hard to see all of the problems.

Mikkel Svold (23:06):
I have three kids very disorganized. That's my house.

Jennifer Crandall (23:10):
So you know that your house might not be as clean as you want it to be, right?

Mikkel Svold (23:16):
It's very nicely stated.

Jennifer Crandall (23:20):
But you also might not notice all of the problems that you need to address until you reorganize. So, okay, let's go in and clean up everything and make it stick and span. Oh, now I see over here a problem that I need to address. That's how we see it too. So if I walk through a facility and it's very pristine and clean, I might not notice a lot, but I probably am going to go in with a mindset of it just a little bit more than normal because I can see it. And I normally might not be able to, but I'm going to address either one of those situations, and I'm going to say it in a hazard, in a risk assessment type, the way that I word it to the investor or whoever I'm reporting to, that this is a low hazard, it's a low risk because you have everything in order. And it looks-

Mikkel Svold (24:14):
So actually, again, just like buying a house?

Jennifer Crandall (24:17):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mikkel Svold (24:17):
You have a risk assessment. Yeah.

Jennifer Crandall (24:18):
That's right. That's right.

Mikkel Svold (24:19):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The last bullet that we know to mention is the accumulative costs. You need to explain to me what do we mean by that.

Jennifer Crandall (24:29):
Yeah. So I use the environmental monitoring program as a big way to look at accumulative cost. And so if you don't have proper sanitary design in different areas, hygienic design, you're going to have places that you might have what we call food traps or bacteria traps. And in those, if you are swabbing properly after sanitation, and this is just one example of many that we could share, but sanitation usually can become a very costly process if you don't have cleanliness. So you clean once and you still are getting post-sanitation hits on your ATP swabs, so then you have to clean again. That's the next step. So it's second set of chemicals, amount of water, and then second set of swabs.

Mikkel Svold (25:21):
But also it may also result in production halts, an extra halt in production.

Jennifer Crandall (25:25):
That's right production.

Mikkel Svold (25:26):
That may actually be the most expensive bit, right?

Jennifer Crandall (25:28):
That's right. That's right.

Mikkel Svold (25:30):
If you're a dairy production shooting through thousands of liters of milk every hour, well that one hour of cleaning is going to be expensive for you.

Jennifer Crandall (25:37):
Absolutely. And you think about a lot of goals of companies and a lot of expense comes in labor cost.

(25:45):
So if you're in a company that has a very designated sanitation crew and now they're on overtime, so now you're increasing the cost because they couldn't get their job done appropriately in the eight hours that they had, so now they're staying over two or three more hours and multiply that times 300 days a year, and that's going to be a huge chunk of money as well. So you're also using a lot more labor than you might've necessarily needed to if you had appropriate design.

Mikkel Svold (26:13):
Have you been in that situation where you've seen that live?

Jennifer Crandall (26:17):
Oh, yes. Yeah, multiple times. Especially my dairy days. My dairy days, I worked in a union company, so that was very protective of their overtime hours and how they worked. And so I definitely ran into it where I'd have to go and do what we call draft people to stay over to get something done. And it also that delay in production. So if you have a 24 hour, seven days a week or five days a week operation, you're delaying start times, which means you're delaying end times, which means that you are now pushing sanitation back to get production done. You're holding production people over.

Mikkel Svold (26:59):
So it's a vicious cycle.

Jennifer Crandall (26:59):
It's a huge vicious cycle. And I saw it. I executed that pretty much every week at least two or three times a week. Yeah.

Mikkel Svold (27:08):
Wow. You, I mean, as one of the big players, I know that the profit margins are not huge, especially when you talk dairy in the food industry in general. But I would presume still that the large enterprises, they have an easier time hiring in extra people to push through that extra sanitary or cleaning job. What if you are a small and medium-sized company? What are you going to do?

Jennifer Crandall (27:38):
Oh my, yeah.

Mikkel Svold (27:39):
How would you advise me if I was, I have a small milk product producing company. We do cheese and milk.

Jennifer Crandall (27:47):
Yeah. Well, for one, I will correct that. Large companies also run so lean that, especially in those manufacturing facilities, they may not have good backups.

Mikkel Svold (27:58):
Got yeah

(27:58):
So

Jennifer Crandall (27:58):
Then you are drafting people for overtime. You're trying to convince your team to stay over. And in small and mid-sized companies, you're doing the exact same thing. But what you're doing is you have a smaller pool of people. So you might have more cross-training in a larger company than you would have in a small company, but you also run the risk of if you're union people, they have to be trained. You have to prove to the union that you drafted the right person, that they know what they're doing. And it can't be any of the supervisory roles or managerial roles. But in that small and mid-sized company, you probably don't have union employees. You might have temp employees. And in that situation, that's not who you want to be doing the extra work at the end of a night, because they're going to make more mistakes. So there is a risk. And I just did a webinar on this recently too, where we talked about the risks of having different people on different shifts. Your second shift and your third shift people are higher risk than your first shift, because you don't have the same manager and supervisor support enforcing all the rules. So those are things that you have to think about from-

Mikkel Svold (29:10):
And it's dark.

Jennifer Crandall (29:11):
Yes.

Mikkel Svold (29:12):
You don't have the same lighting.

Jennifer Crandall (29:13):
You don't have the same lighting. Yeah. There are so many different things and people are tired, so you don't know their situations. And depending on the environment that you have, whether it's cold or hot environments where people down very quickly.

Mikkel Svold (29:28):
I wonder, when you explain this case, if I'm the facility manager, I can fairly easily understand that because that will impact my own performance if I am head of the production or head of the facility, that impacts the metrics that I measured on. But when I then go and say, "Hey, we need more hygienic foundational thinking before we introduce this new machine, or before we open up this, or start building or start drawing this new production hall. I will have to go to the CFO and ask for money. How do you find that? How easy is that?

Jennifer Crandall (30:16):
It's not easy. I mean, you can justify a lot of things. You don't always know where their mindset is or all of their plans for capital investment. And especially in a manufacturing facility, you're going to run into this more where the leadership of the company knows the direction of the company, they know the vision of the company. So if you are dealing with these issues at a manager level, kind of mid or lower management, You don't have that full picture.

(30:53):
So you might go into the CFO office or might go into the general plant manager office and say, I need more, whatever. I mean, we could use any example, but say, I need a new piece of equipment for the filler and I need to make sure it's designed so that I don't have so many hits for post sanitation swapping. So I want to make sure that it has all the right appropriate specs. First off, you have to justify why do I need this? And it's going to be more related to efficiency, most likely and capacity of the facility and the production. It's not going to be related to... It might be related to overtime because overtime gets people's attention and those are usually the conversations in that room. But you have to have consistently, and you have to know the vision of where are we going as a company? Are we going to run out of capacity in this building? Are we going to build in a new space? So a lot of the conversations I hear whenever I've been engaged in my clientele are related to that. And so food safety is not the conversation. The hygienic design is not the conversation, it's we're going to run out of room. We don't have enough inventory space.

Mikkel Svold (32:10):
It just sounds so weird to me, but because as a food company, that is what you deliver. That is food safety, that is your primary product. But why is that? Is that because you just presume that if it's approved for food contact, this and that machine, then it is also hygienically designed? Is that the case? Or why is it such a hard case to build?

Jennifer Crandall (32:35):
Yeah, that's a good... Yes.

Mikkel Svold (32:38):
It's just so weird to me.

Jennifer Crandall (32:42):
It is. And we talked a little bit about this. And I mentioned, so my brother works for an engineering firm, and they do construction. And so they solely go off the specs that are given to them from the companies. And so I asked him the other day, I was like, "Hey, tell me how you would manage this if say, they want you to sharpen your pencils as you're bidding on a design." And his comment back to me was like, "I go and sharpen my pencils. They have to make the decisions. If they want me to reduce the spec, that might affect the hygienic design that's on them, that's not on me." So he's always going to follow what the customer requirement is. The conversations, the conversations are happening in that small and mid-sized company. And that's why I said earlier on, the investors need to know whoever is making that financial decision needs to know that hygienic design is part of it. But I think you hit the nail on the head that they assume if it meets certain standards, that it's going to also have that hygienic design.

(33:51):
So when you talk about the 3A standards or USDA or FDA standards, and I know you have one in Europe as well, I forgot the acronym, but you have those standards that you have to meet. The assumption is that that's enough. That's bare minimum. And that's what we don't look at from, I think people just are like, okay, everybody's putting out this piece of equipment. It's like a base model of a car. That's the base model of the car. I can get more bells and whistles, but those are luxury items. They're not necessary. And I do think that comes up quite a bit.

Mikkel Svold (34:29):
Yeah, yeah. Jennifer, we have just one last question that I really want to ask you before we have to round off. What advice, one advice, would you give any small medium-sized food company standing on the doorstep into installing a new machine or opening a new facility? Or what is the one advice that you think they should have in mind?

Jennifer Crandall (35:04):
I mean, immediately I go to bring knowledgeable food safety people into the discussion as early as possible. So whether that be through a consultant, through somebody knowledgeable in the industry that you hire as somebody on the board. But make sure that somebody in advocate for you, for your company understands what food safety means from that more corporate perspective. Because they may not catch everything. I mean, there's no guarantees that you can catch everything as you go into that space. So you're always making decisions that might cut corners accidentally, but having that person review design documents with you and be in the discussions, you have to know how they learn. So just understanding how they work with you. So are they a very analytical person that needs to read all the specs and catch everything in the specifications and let you know the risk? But also they need to be in those conversations because sometimes those conversations, things come up that are related to hygienic design that nobody's aware of in that room, and it's totally missed and glazed over where that could have been prevented. And then they could say, no, no. You need to make sure that you have, going back to the drain example, you need to have drains whatever feet to make sure that you are keeping that. Being in that discussion, it's just they are not in those discussions regularly.

Mikkel Svold (36:35):
And maybe just remember that if you don't do it, you may lose your shelf time, your shelf meters.

Jennifer Crandall (36:42):
That's right.

Mikkel Svold (36:42):
You may lose your entire business opportunity right there.

Jennifer Crandall (36:46):
Yeah. That's your huge risk.

Mikkel Svold (36:49):
That's one big reason.

Jennifer Crandall (36:50):
That's one big reason. Hire the food safety person early so you can have those discussions. I want to amend that just a smidge. Hire an experienced food safety person at that stage. Don't hire somebody... So I was an unexperienced person the first eight years of my career. I would say for the first 10 years, so make sure that person has more than 10 years of experience. Pay for it. Don't be afraid to pay to have that person on your team, because the people who have less than 10 years experience and nothing against them, they're just still learning and they're still seeing all those little mistakes that might happen that cost you, where somebody who has 20 years experience is going to have been through the wringer and understand someone like me where I understand, hey, if you don't figure out a way to capture loose wire before it gets into your low mold grinder, you're going to have molds that come out with holes in them.

Mikkel Svold (37:51):
Big problem. Yeah.

Jennifer Crandall (37:51):
Yeah. It's a huge problem. And it's just shut you down for days. You need those people that have that kind of experience.

Mikkel Svold (37:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Jennifer Crandall, thank you so much for your input. It was a real pleasure talking to you today.

Jennifer Crandall (38:04):
Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you.

Mikkel Svold (38:06):
And to you guys out there listening and watching this, thank you so much for joining in. And please do join the conversation as well if you'd like to. You can find us obviously, on social media, but also reach out to us on podcast@NGI-Global.com, and that was podcast@NGI-Global.com. And I think with that, just hang in there and involve people. I think that's my takeaway, involve the right people with experience.

Jennifer Crandall (38:38):
Experience. Yes.

Mikkel Svold (38:38):
Last point. Yeah. Yeah. And with that, thank you so much for listening.