Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

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Sara Jane Bellocchi: There's tools out there that get you out of Excel and get you out of the manual data. We talked a lot about data yesterday and get you out of the hole of trying to manage all of this data that you're taking in and make it to where you can rest easy knowing that you're going to pass that audit because you have this tool behind you that's managing a lot of those systems and processes for you.

Matthew Regusci: When I was selling software for compliance and managing and One of the things I said all the time was our biggest competitor isn't name the other named competitor within the industry. Our biggest competitors actually Excel, it's Google Docs, it's SharePoint, et cetera, et cetera.

intro: Nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans, Francine L. Shaw and Matt Ragushi for a deep dive. Dive into food safety, it all boils down to one golden rule, don't eat poop, don't eat poop.

Matthew Regusci: Well, hello, hello. We are live here at the food safety consortium and we have Sarah Jane, is that right? Sarah Jane Balocki. Sarah Jane Balocki in front of us from Trace Gaines. Sarah, tell us a little about yourself.

Sara Jane Bellocchi: I've been working for Trace Gains for about a year and a half. I came from industry, so I worked in contract manufacturing, started out my life actually with natural grocers and retail as a nutritional health coach, then worked into, actually had my own brand, came to my contract manufacturer when I was looking for a contract manufacturer for my brand, started out in regulatory, went regulatory to managing R and D to becoming a director of food safety and quality, where I bought Trace Gains.

As a director of food safety and quality and then jumped ship about a year and a half ago to help customers realize the value of the network.

Matthew Regusci: Awesome. So your position at Trace Gaines is functional consultant, functional consultant,

Sara Jane Bellocchi: which

Matthew Regusci: is way better than a dysfunctional consultant. Yes. Very much better.

We know a few of them. Don't we friends? We do. So

Francine L Shaw: that's how we operate. So very cool.

What is cool is that you have worked in various aspects of the industry, which means that you understand a lot about the industry and how it works. Yeah. What do you like best about what you do?

Sara Jane Bellocchi: What do I like best about what I do?

I would have to say meeting all of the amazing people that I get to meet. So part of what I do with Trace Gaines is I get to go to shows like these. This one has been great for all the regulators and getting that face time with them. In addition to working for Trace Gaines, I'm working on an international food law certificate through Michigan State University, and I'm taking regulatory leadership right now, which Hands right into a lot of the topics that we've heard from during this time, as far as my customers go as a functional consultant.

I work with all of our top 100 customers, so I help with continuous improvement projects and I really get to genuinely help people really make quality people's lives easier. Show them a better way than working 70 hours a week and running themselves ragged so you can elaborate on that.

Like better way to do what?

A better way to do documentation, a better way to manage your suppliers, to manage the relationship with your suppliers, a better way to do your risk assessments, a better way to do horizon scanning, a better way to manage your specifications, right? There's tools out there that get you out of Excel and get you out of the manual data.

We talked a lot about data yesterday and get you out of the hole of trying to manage all of this data that you're taking in and make it to where you can rest easy knowing that you're going to pass that audit because you have this tool behind you that's managing a lot of those systems and processes for you.

Matthew Regusci: When I was selling software for compliance and managing and My team, one of the things I said all the time was our biggest competitor isn't name the other named competitor within the industry.

Our biggest competitors actually Excel, it's Google Docs, it's SharePoint, et cetera, et cetera. What makes trace gains significantly or even a little bit better than any of those other ways at which the industry is managing. Yeah.

Sara Jane Bellocchi: So I actually shopped as a director of food safety and quality. I went to all the software companies and did all the demos and got all the pricing and looked at everybody before I chose trace gains.

And what brought me to chase gains was the network. So as I managed a bakery, dry blending and. So when we did this supplier exercise, which is where we see how many suppliers are already in the network, so I could see who was providing to me that would already have documents posted, my supplier exercise was 85, 90 percent of my suppliers were already on the network.

So that's like instant compliance. All I had to go do was make those connections. Set up my document requirements, make connections like you would on LinkedIn, saying, I buy from you. And they go, yeah, you buy from me. This is what you buy. Here are the docs that you need. So all they have to do is approve the connection and all those documents, their GFSI cert, their allergen forms, everything is already there.

So it was that instant compliance where I was finding. I talked about it yesterday, doing a mock recall and finding packets that are five years old from, because we were literally having physical paper packets and Excel spreadsheets. And I had two regulatory people managing emails just to try to collect all the documentation and we still weren't compliant.

So really the network, the power of the network here in North America is immensely powerful. So the network is what got me to trace it.

Matthew Regusci: 85 percent of your suppliers are already on there already on the net. Suppliers are utilizing trace games.

Sara Jane Bellocchi: I believe we're close to 70, 000 supplier locations at this point.

Holy cow. Yeah. And we use a thing called standard forms. So in addition to having this This instant compliance, the standard forms really help the supplier as well. That way we're getting consistent data across everything. So we have suitability forms and country of origin forms. And again, they fill it out once and then it goes to everyone that they're connected with instead of having to go to 18 different portals and upload 18 different sets of documents.

And remember all those passwords that the power of the network makes. Um, and

Francine L Shaw: that's a great idea because that's the number one complaint in the industry is having to use all these portals with all the different, various suppliers. And it's a nightmare.

Sara Jane Bellocchi: It is. It is. And it's, as TraceGains has evolved, we started out in that supplier management space.

A big piece of it is also what we call supplier compliance, and that's the corrective action reporting with suppliers, and the certificate of analysis scanning, which Eliminates a lot of the manual processes of reviewing a spec and comparing it to a C of A. We use A. I. To read it, but we've evolved into new product development and into all these other things that feed in using that supplier data and other spaces as well.

Francine L Shaw: And you guys do more than supply chain. Management. Your company is quite extensive, isn't it?

Sara Jane Bellocchi: Yeah. So we've partnered with us. Just did you comply to bring the horizon scanning data into it as well? So you can with once you're connected with your suppliers and you have all your items loaded, you can actually pull real data from S.

G. S. We have a regulatory global piece with them. We call it networked intelligence. We do claims management. We also have formulas, specification management, audit management, quality management. So really, we try to be that one source of truth. And a lot of times we have customers, at least in my realm, customers who use an API to link back to their ERP or to their warehouse management system so they can push and pull data.

But trace gains becomes that one source of truth.

Francine L Shaw: So one success story or more, what's the success story about? People like success stories, and that's what we've been doing throughout the podcast. No names. Yeah. Clearly, we don't want you to talk about your clients, but tell us about

Sara Jane Bellocchi: a success story. I think of, there's so many scenarios where I feel like I've seen an improvement, right?

Where you go from, at least in my experience, experience. I had five people on my regulatory team. I had a manager, I had two people doing raw materials and I had two people handling finished goods. We added trace gains. One of my people left to go be an office manager, right? She left on her own, but I didn't have to replace her.

And then I had another person who we were able to repurpose into our R and D commercialization team. So my regulatory team went from five people people to three people, and then you add other tools and instead of having to train a receiving tech, we all know how turnover goes in the industry. Having to retrain a receiving tech, how to read a COA, how to look at it.

We have the computer looking at it. Another great success story in that supplier compliance piece of reading of the certificate of analysis. We had product come in that was not the product that we had ordered. And because the certificate of analysis was off enough, it flagged it. If we would have used that product, we would have done a lot more.

It's salt, right? So you look at salt, and in this particular instance, we're producing Organic. And if I would have used the salt with YPS in my product, I would have had a lot more damage to my facility, but because of seeing that the certificate of analysis was off, we didn't use that product, right? So it saves, it's saved me personally, right?

Immensely. If I look at my customers, I have customers scanning over a million COAs for some of the big boys, right? Scanning a million COAs a year, that's saving, I can't count, I'd have to go do an Excel spreadsheet or something to figure out the math and how much time that's saving on a receiving dock.

But how much money is it saving as well from a not receiving non compliant product.

Matthew Regusci: Yeah.

So, what is your favorite part of Food Safety Consortium and where do you see opportunities for improvement?

Sara Jane Bellocchi: My favorite part of Food Safety Consortium is all the regulators that have been here. I would have never expected to see Department of Homeland Security here and talking with them has been great.

Super interesting because they're trying to look for ways to engage with industry and this is the place to do it, right? There's a lot of people from industry here. So that was probably my favorite of it. And my least favorite I would say is the venue. The the AC has been winterized and it is way too hot.

Francine L Shaw: So, uh, okay. A little backstory. Last year, it was like in a glow in the air.

Sara Jane Bellocchi: And I'm like, I come from Idaho and it is nice and dry and cold. And here I'm like, this is humid and hot. What is this? Right.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah. So that's what I think they're, we're trying to make compensate and maybe we went a little too far in the other, the other direction.

I don't know. I feel like I need to defend and I, that's not my intent, but I just remember how cold it was

Matthew Regusci: and she's wearing a sweatshirt still and it's hot.

Francine L Shaw: Well, I came prepared for freezing. And I overdid it. So yeah, the person that we were speaking to before you came over here, we were talking about, we came prepared to freeze.

So one more question.

What does trust mean

Sara Jane Bellocchi: to you? What does trust trust? Oh, that's an interesting one. Trust So I obviously think in supply chain and I want to trust my suppliers, right? Like I want them to be transparent with me. I want to have a good relationship. I want to trust that what they're selling me is what I'm going to actually get.

That's the best I can give you on trust.

Matthew Regusci: Yeah, that's great.

Sara Jane Bellocchi: Awesome. Well,

Matthew Regusci: thank you so much.

Sara Jane Bellocchi: It was a

Matthew Regusci: pleasure.

Sara Jane Bellocchi: Thank you for having me.