Safer fresh food for Asian shoppers: the role for food retail
In the face of a number of scares in recent years, Asia’s modern retail chains must see food safety as both a responsibility and an opportunity. That was the message that rang through during the first session of the Asiafruit Congress last week.
“In the business of food retail, the imperative is really shopper trust,” stated Thomas W Vandeboncoeur of Goodheart Resource. “They have to trust you as a retailer. A big issue is potentially a breach in food safety, and that is very often catastrophic for retailers.”
Looking from the threat to the opportunity was Hong Kong retailer Wellcome Supermarket’s Karen Lee. She explained Wellcome had instigated a food safety culture throughout the company, and was working hard on farm to fork traceability – work that was being communicated to consumers.
“Around 80 per cent of Hong Kong people buy their produce from traditional wet markets,” she said. “How we attract customers is by sharing our point of difference, which is our food safety control system. We’re sharing information about what we’re doing.”
An important part of guaranteeing food safety to consumers is tight cold chain management. “Temperature control is key to ensuring freshness and quality,” explained Tng Ah Yiam from the ECR Singapore Council. Mr Tng is also in charge of fresh food purchasing at Singaporean retailer NTUC Fairprice.
Maintaining the cold chain is a matter of employee education and continual temperature checks, he stated, and getting it right is critical for retailers.
The mechanics of that were expanded upon by Elizabeth Darragh for monitoring equipment firm Sensitech, who explained that apart from food safety proper cold chain management was a profit-maker.
“Process is the biggest problem, it’s the biggest cause of waste in a retailers shrink problem,” she said. “Retailers could increase their profit by 29 per cent if they could reduce their waste by half.”
A full report on the Asiafruit Congress and ASIA FRUIT LOGISTICA will appear in the October issue of Asiafruit Magazine.
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