Making Food Safe For Everyone (Not Just Some) with Betsy Craig, CEO and Founder of MenuTrinfo® | Episode 55
So I would explain it this way. Faith is watching somebody cross a tight rope and knowing that they've been doing it their whole lives and they can go from one side to the other. Trust is believing they really can do it with a wheelbarrow, and I put my butt in the wheelbarrow. That's trust.
Intro:Everybody's gotta eat, and 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 Elishar and Matt Ragucci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.
Intro:Don't eat poop.
Matt:Today, we are with Betsy Craig from MenuTrinfo. Hey. Yes. Awesome. Alright.
Matt:We're at the food safety consortium. Betsy, tell us a little about yourself.
Betsy:Oh, it's so exciting to talk about myself. Might be my favorite topic, but good to see you, Matt. Good to see you, Francine. So I came up with a great idea off Facebook in 2010, married to the right guy, built a database, do nutrition for restaurants, built the company from there, allergy training, certified free from allergens, been living in that food safety space. Before that, I've been in and around restaurants since I was about 5 years old, so perfect fit.
Matt:Nice. Not just like the happy meal at McDonald's, but, like, actually in restaurants?
Betsy:In restaurants started with a butcher shop when I was a little kid. My grandparents owned a butcher shop outside Albany, New York. So I used to eat raw ground beef. They would hand it to me over the counter. I know your face.
Betsy:Look at Francine, Francine. I just gagged, and they would hand it to me like a meatball. And out of 5 year old kids, what I ate. Today, I it just makes my skin crawl. But, yeah, from there to Sizzler to Ponderosa to restaurants to full blown restaurants to
Matt:That's awesome. What made you go, oh my gosh. Somebody needs to do this. I need to create this company called MenuTinfo. And have you seen that is actually accurate, that there is a need for it?
Matt:And how has it been going?
Betsy:So somebody gave me the idea on Facebook. They said menu labeling was coming for restaurants. So menu trends file stands for menu nutrition information all mashed up. And I knew we could build a nutrition database and provide information for consumers to be transparent about what they're eating, save their lives through salt content or calorie content or help fight obesity, all of that good stuff that we get to do. Fairly quickly, I knew that we were onto something around allergens because we could tag allergens all the way down to subparticle ingredients.
Betsy:And so that launched us into the allergen space. There was no allergy training out yet. We were the first ones to do it. We've been the leaders in this space for food service since 2010.
Francine:So I know that you work for many major companies. You've done a lot of good work, universities, colleges, all over the country. What is your biggest success story?
Betsy:I instantly think of a young kid I call Sam. It's not his real name. Junior in high school, 4 incidents of food allergic reaction on a campus of high school. Smart enough to get invited to a special high school for science and math. He's gone on, by the way, as a junior in college right now, premed, Great kid, but 2 helicopter rides to save his life because of a dairy allergy and crazy stuff.
Betsy:Crazy. So I got a phone call from the lawyer that said, do you know this account? Do you know this company? I didn't, but I learned all about him. Went in, looked at what they were doing, helped them right some wrongs, helped them set the stage for a successful senior year for him.
Betsy:Literally myself or somebody who works for us looked at every single meal that kid ate for his senior year of high school. Not one incident where he got hurt by food, graduated best email I've ever seen in my life. The reason I do what I do, the reason I haven't slept in 14 years is Sam and kids just like Sam. So we are impactful, that's a high school, but we're over a 1000 colleges. We're in huge companies as well as self op locations.
Betsy:We get to change the path for food allergies on college campuses, and today we're taking that to retail. So now you can't just say dairy free. We want you to prove it with our certification at this point. So making it so Sam can eat and every other kid like Sam can eat.
Francine:So we all do what we do because we're very passionate about what we do, and we all have heard those stories just like you. And you could tell probably a 100 stories like that, and we're very our podcast is very story driven. The little boy in New York.
Betsy:Oh, Elijah.
Francine:Yes. Elijah, 3 years old.
Betsy:First off, shout out to his beautiful parents, Dean and Thomas. God love them. 3 year old child at home up until he goes to day care. Day care is a city run location, city of New York. I believe it was in Hell's Kitchen.
Betsy:1st week in day care, Wednesday of that week, kiddo allergic to dairy, somebody feeds him a grilled cheese sandwich. They don't understand grilled cheese has dairy in it. He passes away. The end result is legislation starting in New York that passed in September of 2019 and also in Illinois, California, and it's pending in a bunch of other states, which says all day cares must have training and know how to use an epinephrine device, how to save a life. Because I'm sure the person that fed that poor sweet child a grilled cheese syringe will never have the same kind of life.
Betsy:I'm sure it lives in her mind. I know it devastated, of course, as parents and the impact what great pass and what great training's gonna come out of this, but my goodness, who would not want that for their family, of course?
Francine:These are emotional stories. These hit home because they don't have to happen. It's the foodborne illnesses, the food allergen deaths, whether we know the people or not. And many times, we meet them become very emotional and very personal, and you were very humble when you talked about what you do. You're a driving force behind some of the legislation and the things that have gone on in the food allergen space, and I know that.
Francine:And it wouldn't be where it is without you and people like yourself. So his story was very tragic. I remember when it happened, and I cannot imagine sending my child to day care or the stories that just had came out of Canada
Betsy:Yeah.
Francine:With the foodborne illnesses when they come home, god forbid, sick and or with lifelong side effects from something that they've eaten or, god forbid, die. What do you wish the food service industry knew or understood better than they do about the food that they serve?
Betsy:1st, thank you for the compliments. 2nd, I would love to be out of business because food allergies weren't an issue anymore, but I don't see that happening right away. And what I wish the industry would understand is they don't know what they don't know, and the arrogance of pretending they know is harming people. And so we need to approach this as an industry, and that's how I've gone after it as a peer in the industry to say, let's hop in this together. Just a small milligram of peanut protein can kill a kid.
Betsy:Just a small piece of dairy. Dairy is the number one lethal allergen. We always think peanuts is. It's not. It's dairy.
Betsy:So getting educated, doing a simple course that costs less than the equivalent of a Starbucks a month can teach your people what to do and how to keep somebody safe and keep from having a restaurant or brand ending event.
Matt:Wow. I didn't realize that dairy was the most lethal. And what is it? Is it the lactose in the dairy? Or
Betsy:You know what? It's the protein.
Matt:It's the protein.
Betsy:Protein in the dairy. It's the protein in it. I had heard that for the first time from somebody at the FDA because we do an event in March, and they spoke and they said that. And I was like, really? And that was last March.
Betsy:I just heard it again verified by a PhD teacher out of a school in London who also teaches in Australia, and that's what all the science backs. It's just very lethal. It's actually one of the reasons vegan vegetarian food is a challenge because people that are allergic to dairy eat vegan food thinking it's safe because there's not supposed to be dairy and vegan food. Here's the problem. Vegetarian food and vegan food get mixed up.
Matt:Yeah.
Betsy:And vegetarian food has dairy, and the v stands for victim at that point. It's no longer vegetarian or vegan. It is now a victim.
Francine:Wow. So I was just a couple hours ago speaking to a young lady that's here. She's allergic to 7 of the major food allergens, 7. Terrified to go out and eat in restaurants. She doesn't do it.
Francine:Sure. We all understand why. And she was invited to dinner tonight, and she's she's terrified to go. It shouldn't be that way.
Betsy:It shouldn't. And with the right restaurant, it doesn't need to be that way. It is possible to safely serve people with numerous food allergies.
Francine:And I try to convince people of this. There's such a market. If you go to the effort of training your people and doing it right, there's such a market for increased sales and for those individuals that do.
Betsy:It's a loyalty. Francine, it's a loyalty. Right. People will go back. They will come back for every major holiday.
Betsy:They will come back for every graduation. However, it is a hard go to convince them, and the only way training has gotten any traction is from lawsuits and government mandates, which is a shame, but that's what's made us move the needle.
Francine:Well and most people don't know that it's considered to be a disability.
Betsy:It fully is. Yeah.
Matt:I
Betsy:do not know that either. Really?
Matt:No. And I have a ton of kids with disabilities. And some of them, they were preemie, and they no longer have those issues. But when they came home, they had a lot of allergy issues as being preemie. Yes.
Matt:That is that's fascinating. I didn't think of it as a disability, but you're absolutely right. It it is. Fully falls under ADA.
Betsy:Wow. You would no more tell somebody they can't eat at your restaurant because they have diabetes or because they're in a wheelchair, but you can turn them away because they have a food allergy. Now I understand your concern about restaurant tour is concerned about not being able to feed them properly, but there's basic training and basic things you can do. I won't go into it. I could talk for hours on this topic, but there are plenty of things you could do to keep somebody safe even with 7 allergens.
Matt:Netflix. I don't know if you watch Netflix at all, but there's a series called rotten.
Betsy:And I have not watched that series tonight.
Matt:There's one about allergies, and there's a restaurateur there that caters specifically to people with allergies. And he actually explains the whole entire process. So it'd be I recommend that episode, and I would love to have another conversation with you after you watch it too and be like, oh my gosh. If ever we could do this. But he talked about the exact same thing that the loyalty that he receives from his customers because of that.
Matt:Yeah.
Betsy:We see it with our nutrition. We do a lot of nutrition for restaurant brands and then allergen charts and makeup. Basically, we call them nutrition bibles. I hope I don't offend anybody using that term, but truthfully, every ingredient all the way down to subparticle ingredients, we can let folks know what's in what. If If you're allergic to onions, you need to know in onion soup or where are the onions, or in tomato soup, is there onions?
Betsy:Well, it might be down in the spices. So identifying all the way down to minor ingredients and adding ingredients is huge.
Matt:I don't think god will care. He wrote a whole entire book called Leviticus about about nutrition.
Betsy:That's wonderful. You just quoted the bible. It's fabulous. Alright.
Matt:Yeah. Fascinating book for everybody who's interested in what they can and cannot do as a Jew. So I would love to know, like, what your thoughts are on the difference between dietary intolerances and dietary allergens because I find that that people use those 2 interchangeably, and I feel like that's a life and death differentiation.
Betsy:So that's really interesting. So first off, from a food service standpoint, it doesn't matter. If it's an intolerance versus an allergy, you have to treat it the same because you can't ask them probing questions.
Matt:Is this really going to kill you?
Betsy:How bad? How much can you have?
Francine:The other thing, how allergic are you?
Betsy:On a scale of 1 to 10. And the truth of the matter is allergic reactions today might be different than they were 6 months ago and different than they'll be 6 months from now.
Francine:So that's
Matt:a really good point because intolerance, you can build up, and then all of a sudden, there's a big catastrophic issue.
Betsy:You just fall off the cliff with it. And so there is a challenge from that standpoint. Many people understand intolerances in their own body where if they eat a certain thing, they know they're gonna get a headache or they know they're gonna get the sniffles, and that's truly an intolerance versus they don't know what their reaction's gonna be. So in our training, we teach 3 different ways. We teach about a food allergy and intolerance and about gluten free celiac disease so that our consumer, our food service professional taking our course understands the three different levels because it's important.
Betsy:Somebody with a food allergy could pass away instantly. Somebody with intolerance is just gonna feel poopy, and somebody with celiac disease might get gluten and be in the bathroom for 2 weeks. In college, that means they might miss their midterms. So it's got a different play out based on what their challenge is.
Matt:Yeah. My wife is a nurse, and she was explaining to my kids what happens with celiac disease, and I was like, so don't eat poop. Obviously, we're okay with the graphic details, but I didn't realize how graphic that Yeah.
Betsy:It's pretty nasty. Blosive nasty diarrhea. It just it completely tears apart the villi in your small intestines, which makes things run right through you. And people literally literally can't leave a bathroom for I've heard of it up to 2 weeks.
Matt:Fun. Okay. Well, on that note, let's talk about something a little different. Sorry.
Betsy:It's okay. It's okay. We can talk poop.
Francine:We talk poop all the time. Okay. Good. All the time. So what does trust mean to you?
Betsy:So I would explain it this way. Faith is watching somebody cross a tightrope and knowing that they've been doing it their whole lives and they can go from one side to the other. Trust is believing they really can do it with a wheelbarrow, and I put my butt in the wheelbarrow. That's trust.
Francine:That is great and quick.
Matt:We tell everybody all the time with our podcast when we interview them that we really hope for stories. You just naturally are a storyteller.
Betsy:Yeah. I really am. Actually awesome. It's just what I do because it really lets people understand where my passion comes from. Like, when you talk about trust is one of our pillars at our company, integrity, service, and trust.
Betsy:So trust, I talk about regularly because we're nothing if people don't trust us and people don't leave us because they trust us. Right. Yeah. Our brand is based on that. That's how
Francine:you yeah. That's exactly how you vote your So
Betsy:that was an easy one. You didn't even know you were throwing me softball. Yeah. But I love it.
Francine:Well, no. And we've asked everybody that question and
Betsy:About trust?
Francine:You know? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Betsy:Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I apologize. I don't remember that from your
Matt:past didn't end it. Today.
Betsy:Okay. Thank you. I was like, I've listened to your podcast, you guys.
Francine:No. No. Everybody today.
Betsy:Yeah. That's my take on trust. Faith versus trust.
Matt:But when somebody actually listens to your podcast when they go, no. You don't ask that question every single time.
Francine:You're not during that question.
Matt:You're asking trust, and you're lying to me. What's going on?
Betsy:That's how I define trust in my life, in my business.
Matt:Another question we've asked everybody today is what do you like about the I know it this is only the halfway through the 1st day, but what do you like about the food safety consortium? And then what would you give advice or for opportunities to make it better?
Betsy:So I attended this a few years ago pre COVID, so it's good to be back in person and around people and connections. That's just that's been my favorite part so far. Yeah. To make it better, I don't know yet. I really don't.
Betsy:I'm excited about the program. I'm excited about the variety and the diversity that they're having, so kudos for that. I think they should ask me to do an allergy talk, but that's my own opinion.
Matt:That's good. Well, well, they're they're gonna be listening to this. Just saying this.
Francine:There you go. I love those of us that are like, I think they should ask me to speak. Then it would be better. They just need to ask me to speak.
Matt:The problem is getting you off the stage, Francie. Oh. Such an introvert you.
Francine:Keep telling him I'm an introvert. Yeah.
Betsy:I haven't seen that part of you.
Matt:Okay, Francine. You keep telling him, maybe you don't know the definition of introvert and extrovert. Okay. Is there anything else you would like to talk about before we end this?
Betsy:I just think it's super important what you guys are doing. Carrying a a joyful message about a hard subject and sharing a message that we can do better and let's do better. And that's really our message is we can do better. Food is love. Let's stop hurting people with it.
Betsy:And that's bottom line. So I appreciate what you guys are doing and it's wonderful to see you.
Francine:Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. We love what we do. We have a lot of fun. Not that anybody would believe that.
Francine:But
Matt:Anybody who listens to our episode knows we have a lot of fun.
Francine:Right. Right. Sometimes I think too much.
Matt:Alright. Well, it's a pleasure, Betsy. Thank you so much.
Betsy:You, Matt. Good to see you as always, Francie.
Francine:Yes. You too. Thank you so much.
