With food safety becoming more and more top of mind for the foodservice industry, one cleaning services provider is offering to educate its consumers on the importance of cleaning products—and is working to offer economy-proof, efficient solutions.
Proctor & Gamble Professional, a division of Proctor & Gamble that specifically focuses on products for professional industries such as the foodservice, hospitality, and maintenance industries, launched its Food Safety Solutions program this year.
The program “offers a complete package of customized tools and products that simplify the process of creating a clean environment for customers and employees,” said Jeremy Landrum, customer development manager for Proctor & Gamble Professional, in a statement from the company.
Four components build the Proctor & Gamble Professional Food Safety Solutions program: in-person employee training, compliance solutions, proper tools and technology, and the company’s cleaning products.
The program is intended to correlate the cleanliness of a facility with food safety, but especially hammer home one point: a clean facility is a good facility.
Ed Offshack, associate director of global technology development at Proctor & Gamble Professional, says the cleanliness of a quick-service restaurant is especially important in building and maintaining business.
“I don’t care how good your food tastes; if it’s not clean, that [customer] experience is done,” Offshack says.
Proctor & Gamble Professional is tasked with translating Proctor & Gamble brands such as Tide, Spic and Span, and Downy into products not intended for use in homes.
“We try to take the products and technologies we have and optimize or specialize them for the professionals to use,” says Chris Vuturo, external relations manager for Proctor & Gamble Professional.
One responsibility in creating products for foodservice professionals—especially in a down economy—is creating products that aren’t just better for food safety, but that are as efficient as possible.
Proctor & Gamble Professional completed a study earlier this year that found that efficiency was one of the biggest concerns among cleaning professionals.
According to the study, 90 percent of professional employees responsible for cleaning-product decisions would rather perform more efficiently than have to raise prices for customers, and 85 percent of respondents have opted for a “doing more with less” approach to cleaning during the recession.
Meanwhile, 81 percent of respondents don’t believe that more cleaning products is the right answer to doing a better job, and 68 percent say that teaching staff how to properly clean is the biggest hurdle to performing better.
Norb Mayrhofer, global vice president of Proctor & Gamble Professional, says efficient cleaning products are the ones that require a minimal amount of labor.
“If you can come up with a cleaning product that reduces the labor component, that’s where the money’s at,” Mayrhofer says.
By Sam Oches
