A practical guide to building a food safety culture for retail settings

By Laura M. Wildey Kearse

The phrase “food safety culture” is everywhere these days, but what does it mean and how can you, a front-line retail food manager, cultivate it in your workplace?

At its core, food safety culture is about shared values, beliefs, norms, and practices held and performed by empowered employees that behave in a way that puts food safety first — especially when no one is looking. Creating a good food safety culture means valuing food safety at the very core of everything a food company does.  

Building a Strong Food Safety Culture

Building a strong food safety culture starts with engaging leadership. Securing their support is essential, not just for funding and resources but for reinforcing the idea that food safety is about more than protecting customers; it’s also good for business. Industry failures and foodborne illness outbreaks serve as powerful reminders of what’s at stake. When leadership is on board, they can champion food safety initiatives and support the team through the process.

To guide this effort, you need to educate yourself. There are plenty of online resources, training programs, and guides available to help you deepen your understanding. The more informed you are, the better equipped you’ll be to drive meaningful change.

While leadership may define the company’s values, its front-line managers and employees bring them to life. If food safety isn’t a clearly stated value company-wide, it’s worth at least establishing one within your team. Providing the right tools, training, and support ensures that food safety isn’t just a policy— it’s part of the culture.

Observing how employees work, asking thoughtful questions, and understanding their motivations will help you engage with your team. When food safety is tied to their daily tasks in a way that makes sense, they’re more likely to take ownership of it. Actions speak louder than words; leading by example sets the standard for your team. If they see you prioritizing safe food handling practices, without exception, they’ll follow suit.

Measuring progress is critical. Every food company has a food safety culture -good, bad, or somewhere in-between. Tools like the CDC’s Food Safety Culture Tool can help quantify where your company stands, providing a benchmark for improvement and success.

10 Quick Wins for Food Safety Culture

1. Food Safety on the First Day: Introduce food safety and its importance to employees on day one— it’s non-negotiable.
2. Continuous Conversations: Regularly discuss food safety in pre-shift meetings and huddles. Use quizzes, posters, printouts, etc.
3. Create a Pledge: Have employees commit to food safety by creating a pledge or a promise that’s signed by each team member and placed in a prominent area. Create an environment where food safety is valued, talked about, and acted upon.
4. Positive Mindset: Shift the focus from compliance to enthusiasm about doing things right. If you start thinking positively about food safety and share your positivity, others will follow.
5. Make it Relatable: Connect food safety to employees’ lives. Encourage employees to produce food items as if they were serving their closest friend or family member.  
6. From WHAT to WHY! Help your team understand more than just facts— let them know WHY food safety is so important. Your local health inspector can be a great resource here, and so can the Food Code! The Annexes at the back of the Code provide information about the “why” behind regulations.
7. Incentivize Performance: Recognize employees who excel in food safety. Non-monetary rewards work best as monetary awards can sometimes cause people to do the right thing only when someone is watching.  Use recognition programs that provide immediate, on-the-spot recognition of workers who do things correctly. 
8. Appoint Food Safety Ambassadors: Designate peer leaders who will serve as a role model for others and can be the go-to for food safety questions.
9. Measure it: Use food safety culture assessments, inspection reports, third party audit reports, observations, and employee knowledge checks to track your progress. Don’t forget to act on what you’ve found!
10. Normalize Food Safety: The ultimate goal is to make food safety the social norm. Simply make it the way you do things every day.

Improving food safety culture might feel overwhelming, but even small steps can make a big difference. Use this article as your launching platform. Try a few of these recommendations and see how it goes. At the very least, just start talking about food safety culture— with everyone!

Remember, every company has a food safety culture. What do you want yours to look like?

A Few Food Safety Culture Resources

For more information on food safety culture, check out the following links. While not exhaustive, this list will give you a few good places to start: 

CDC’s Food Safety Culture Information –https://www.cdc.gov/restaurant-food-safety/php/practices/food-safety-culture.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/ehsnet/plain_language/restaurants-and-food-safety-culture.html 

FDA’s Food Safety Culture Information- https://www.fda.gov/food/new-era-smarter-food-safety/food-safety-culture-core-element-4-new-era-smarter-food-safety-blueprint 

Food Safety = Behavior: 30 Proven techniques to enhance employee Compliance https://www.foodsafetyculture.com/Home/Publications 

Food Safety Culture: Creating a behavior-based food safety management system https://www.foodsafetyculture.com/Home/Publications

International Association of Food Protection’s Food Safety Culture Professional Development Group-https://www.foodprotection.org/get-involved/professional-development-groups/food-safety-culture-pdg/ 

Retail Food Safety Regulatory Association Collaborative’s Information- https://www.retailfoodsafetycollaborative.org/tools/creating-a-retail-food-safety-culture-through-the-use-of-active-managerial-control-infographic/ 

STOP Foodborne Illness! Food Safety Culture Toolkit – https://stopfoodborneillness.org/toolkit/fundamentals/

This article was completed with active support from the National Association of County and City Health Officials and the Conference for Food Protection. This document was supported by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (Grant Agreement # 5U18FD007736-03). Its contents are solely the responsibility of NACCHO and CFP and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsors.

About the author: Laura M. Wildey Kearse, MS, CP-FS, is a food safety expert and project manager with broad experience in public and private sectors. As CEO of LMK Food Safety Consulting, she provides consulting services to strengthen food safety initiatives. She contracts with the Conference for Food Protection. She holds an MS in Food Safety from Michigan State and a BS in Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management from the University of Delaware.

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Source: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2025/03/a-pratical-guide-to-building-a-food-safety-culture-for-retail-settings/