The Startup CPG Podcast


In this episode of R&D Radio, host and food scientist Adam Yee sits down with Hermi Galstian, founder of The Food QA, to break down the real difference between food safety and quality - and what founders should actually be looking for when they walk into a co-manufacturer's facility.


Hermi's path into food safety wasn't a straight line. She started as a business major on track for law school, worked in HR recruiting, and only discovered food science after training for a marathon as a vegetarian sparked her interest in nutrition. She helped build her own graduate program in food science before spending years at Follow Your Heart, a vegan food company later acquired by Danone, and eventually launched The Food QA to help CPG brands navigate food safety, quality, and manufacturing partnerships.


Adam and Hermi dig into the core difference between food safety and quality, how to properly vet a contract manufacturer, what third-party audits like SQF and BRC actually mean, and exactly what to look for (and ask about) during a facility tour - from pest control and employee hygiene to ingredient sourcing and pre-op equipment checks.


Listen in as they discuss:

  • The core difference between food safety and quality, with real product examples
  • Hermi's winding path from pre-law to food science to 15 years in the field
  • Why referrals are the best first step when vetting a co-packer
  • Why founders should never assume a manufacturer takes full responsibility for their product
  • What third-party audits like SQF, BRC, and GFSI actually tell you
  • What to do if a manufacturer won't share audit reports or allow a tour
  • What to look for during a facility walkthrough, from corners and hot spots to pest control
  • Why employee hygiene, handwashing stations, and equipment nooks matter more than founders think
  • How ingredient sourcing and substitutions can quietly compromise safety or quality
  • How certifications and product claims (non-GMO, kosher, seed oil free) shape what gets tested



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Creators and Guests

Host
Adam Yee
Podcast Host and Food Scientist

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Hermi Galstian
I think the number one thing to remember is never assume so. Just because they are making your product doesn't mean that they are completely responsible for your product. At the end of the day, your brand name is on the package and that's what consumers know. And if there's a recall or something like that, the information is going to be expected from the brand as well as from the manufacturer. So one of the things is ideally they have some sort of third party audit that you can read through. Hopefully they provide the report to you. And that's not to find out like where did they go wrong? Like what are the problems? It's more of like how did they resolve them and how did they get to the other side of the issues?

00:52
Hermi Galstian
Because inevitably something will go wrong, whether it's a big deal or a small deal with you. But you should know how they are going to approach that and how they're going to ultimately work with you to resolve any situation that might come up.

01:07
Adam Yee
Hey everyone, this is Adam Yee, Food scientist and podcast host of Startup CPGs R&D RADIO where we interview Food scientists and product developers and what they do and how they can help you build your CPG business. Today I'm interviewing Herme Galstian, the founder of the Food QA where she brings together Food science business insights and 15 years of experience to help CPG Food brands navigate Food safety and quality challenges. Her background spans in Food processing, corporate brand and consulting, giving her a unique perspective on translating complex requirements and navigating the frustrating hurdles brands face into practical strategies that help reduce risk, improve operations and grow with confidence.

01:50
Adam Yee
This episode covers the difference between Food safety and quality, how to vet a contract manufacturer through third party audits like SQF and brc, and what to watch for during an in person factory tour such as pest control and hand washing stations, equipment cleanliness, and how the workers interact with you. I also talk about my own experiences doing factory tours and some of my Food safety projects as well. I find Food safety and quality a hugely underrated topic when it comes to making a Food product, and there's a lot of things that go on in the factory floor that can make or break your product's quality and we give you the tools to check on to make sure that your manufacturing partner is a clean one or not. Enjoy this episode of Herme. I'm sure you'll learn a lot.

02:38
Adam Yee
Welcome back to R&D RADIO with your host Adam Yee and I'm here with Herme Galstian from the Food QA Great to have you on the show. Usually we interview formulators and basically my boss wants me to expand the content to a wider range of R&D that we can kind of explore. And I think what is something that we don't really talk about, I feel in the startup community is Food safety and quality. So I'm glad to have you on to kind of give like founders and brands like some insight on what to look for in a Food safety and quality point of view.

03:11
Hermi Galstian
Yep. Usually we're kind of like the last group that gets into these things. So it's always a positive when we're involved.

03:18
Adam Yee
From the beginning, definitely. So first I feel like this is the most common question you get all the time. What's the difference between Food safety and quality?

03:25
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, so they're definitely related. But Food safety is basically the safety of the Food. If you eat it, is it going to make you sick or cause an injury or any host of issues and then the quality is more like the consistency. So does it look the way it's supposed to? Does it taste the way it's supposed to? And more of your brand is involved with that. So not to say Food safety isn't. So with Food safety, obviously if your product isn't safe, that's not good for your brand. But quality is more what differentiates your product from the others.

03:57
Adam Yee
Could you give me an example of like a product that has compromise in Food safety versus a product that has compromise in quality.

04:04
Hermi Galstian
So Food safety would be something like an allergen cross contact. So obviously if you have a peanut free product, then it has peanuts in there that's not safe or there's some sort of microbiological contamination like a bacteria that's going to make people sick. So that would be Food safety. And then quality would be we put too much or too little of a certain ingredient that's going to alter the flavor and it's not going to taste like your product anymore. Whether that's going to make it way too sweet or way too bitter or it just looks completely different if your cookies are burned, for example.

04:37
Adam Yee
Yeah. And usually you get a lot of customer complaints with quality. Right. Like you get like an influx like.

04:42
Hermi Galstian
Definitely.

04:42
Adam Yee
Yeah, yeah. It tastes weird or it tastes funny or the texture is not right. Right, yeah. So you want that consistent in your product. And then Food safety, I think what's most topical is that what explosive diarrhea let thing that's going on right now. The psychospora. Right?

04:56
Hermi Galstian
Yep. That's not fun for anybody.

04:58
Adam Yee
No, definitely not. So herme I want to know a little bit about your history. How did you get involved in this? How. And just would love to hear more about kind of your expertise in the field.

05:10
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. So how I got involved is actually kind of funny. I was actually a business major, and I was on my way to law school, and then I ended up not doing that, working in recruiting, in HR for a bit. And then I became a vegetarian, which I'm not anymore. But while I was a vegetarian, I was training to run a marathon. And so I started exploring how to eat as a vegetarian to prepare to run a marathon, and got interested in Food in that way and then decided to just do a 180, go back to school, learn Food science, got my master's degree, and then worked in the field for the last 15 years.

05:48
Adam Yee
Wow, that's super cool. So you got a degree in Food science to study Food safety and quality. Right. And I think when people hear the word Food science, they don't really think that's a huge component of the curriculum. Right?

06:00
Hermi Galstian
Yes. So actually, at the time when I was there, my university didn't have a Food science master's program. They only had nutrition and dietetics. So we kind of created it with my advisor. So it was a little different in that sense. But, yeah, the thing I learned the most from were my internships, though.

06:19
Adam Yee
Cool. And where were those at?

06:21
Hermi Galstian
So I did an internship first, a culinary internship at a farmer's market restaurant that only sourced their ingredients from the farmer's market. So that was interesting. And then after that, I was an intern at a vegan Food company, and I was doing R and D and quality. And then at the end of my internship, they were going to hire me, and they're like, which one are you interested in, R and D or quality? And I was like, you know what? I really like forms. So I went into quality. I'm sure I'm like, in the 1% who chose that side, but I really enjoy it.

06:56
Adam Yee
Yeah, I think both are interesting, and both are really stable jobs. Honestly, like, I think they're always something you need. I feel like you're like. I don't want to say police person, firefighter maybe, in a sense. Like, if something is in trouble, you have to be the one on call, right?

07:09
Hermi Galstian
Yeah.

07:09
Adam Yee
And I personally done a Food safety project, and I don't like them personally because they had to deal with the FDA and to deal with all the traceability and the forms and all that. But in general, I understand why it's super useful. And if you have the right, I think, mindset and personality. It's a really good field.

07:25
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, I really enjoy it. And you work hand in hand with every single department, especially with R and D. There's a lot of crossover, there's a lot of working together, starting from the formulation all the way until the product is coming out and how we're packaging it and all that stuff. So there's a lot of intertwining of that. And then going back to your comment about, like, we're the police sometimes, it is definitely seen that way. But my goal has always been to not make that the case and to make it more of a collaborative approach. And basically we're all working towards the same goal. We want to sell products, we want them to be safe, and we want our brands to thrive.

08:04
Adam Yee
So look at your history, your work history. You spent a decade in Denone, which is a huge company, and he also done a few smaller companies. Right. So I'd love to hear, like, the importance of Food safety in each of those kind of the bigger companies and the smaller companies.

08:19
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, it actually wasn't a decade in Danone, so the company I was working for was purchased by Danone, so it was an acquisition. So I didn't end up working with Denone for a couple of years. So, yeah, I started out with the vegan Food company. It's a brand called Follow youw Heart that's still around.

08:35
Adam Yee
And.

08:35
Hermi Galstian
And I started again, like I said, as an intern. And then I worked my way up and did all the Food safety, quality, regulatory, and then into the transition with Denone. So it was very interesting to see how our processes were integrated and then vice versa. So after that I went to a brand that only worked with comands. So it was nice to be also on the other side on the brand side versus just on the facility side.

09:03
Adam Yee
Okay, so I guess what are some common things you notice about quality systems and Food safety as you work with one, a startup, follow your heart that then got sold. And then also like other situations where sounds like you are building a plant or you are talking to plants and trying to figure stuff out. I'd love to hear the general process of essentially making sure a manufacturing plant is up to speed and up to quality.

09:31
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, definitely. I've been actually trying to come up with a good acronym to make it easy for people to remember. I'm working on a few. I have a few options. So the first thing is, ideally you have a referral. So if you know somebody who's worked with them, that's going to be a good indicator and it's ideally not somebody who's related to them because that might be a little biased.

09:51
Adam Yee
It happens often for some reason it.

09:53
Hermi Galstian
Does and it could work out, but you just have to do your due diligence. I think the number one thing to remember is never assume so. Just because they are making your product doesn't mean that they are completely responsible for your product. At the end of the day, your brand name is on the package and that's what consumers know. And if there's a recall or something like that, the information is going to be expected from the brand as well as from the manufacturer. Yeah. So one of the things is ideally they have some sort of third party audit that you can read through. Hopefully they provide the report to you. And that's not to find out like where did they go wrong, like what are the problems?

10:34
Hermi Galstian
It's more of like how did they resolve them and how did they get to the other side of the issues? Because inevitably something will go wrong, whether it's a big deal or a small deal with you. But you should know how they are going to approach that and how they're going to ultimately work with you to resolve any situation that might come up.

10:52
Adam Yee
So let's talk about third party audits because this is really important and there's a lot of acronyms for third party audits. I'd love to hear kind of generally what you find to be either trusting third party audits or let's say, because a lot of the brands are debating on price. Right. And generally someone who's like SKF certified is a little bit more expensive. Right. But they have that audit with them. I love for you to go over the value of a third party audit and I think there's a tier list for third party audits as well. And why kind of retailers might want that.

11:23
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, so there are different, obviously types of audits and different ones are used in different situations. Some are better for, let's say shipping if you're distributing worldwide, sometimes they prefer BRC and then it could also be dependent on your customers. So some distributors and customers require, let's say SQF and then there's levels to SQF too. So for me, as long as it's some sort of GFSI audit.

11:48
Adam Yee
And what does that mean?

11:49
Hermi Galstian
So GFSI is Global Food Safety Initiative and then under that there are different audits like the BRC and SQF and others. So it's good to have their certificate which will tell you whether they passed or not. And then it's also good to have their audit report ideally so you can see what issues came up and what were the areas of concern. So either you can pay special attention to it or you can just ask them more about that topic.

12:16
Adam Yee
Got it. So what if they don't have these audits or don't want to give them to you?

12:20
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, that does happen. So ideally you can go in there and look at the place yourself. I feel like most people should be doing that anyway. It's always good to see everything with your own eyes and see what's going on because a lot of things, you know, you can read about, you could look at pictures even, but it's never going to be the same as when you're actually there. So I would say definitely visit if you can have a consultant or somebody, if you don't have somebody on your team who can do this, have somebody from the outside go in and do a supplier audit for you for sure.

12:52
Adam Yee
And so I think if they don't allow an audit or to give you audit information or they don't allow you towards, there's something up, right?

13:00
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. I mean there are other things you could do. There are a lot of like smaller operators out there that just don't have the resources for these things. So you can hopefully at that point just have conversations and ask for documents and like what is your recall plan? Can you trace our ingredients in case there's a problem with them? What tests do you perform on our products? What risks do you see with our ingredients or our processes? And how do you control these hazards? So these are some questions that you can ask to put your own mind at ease and see if they actually know what they're doing and if they're a good partner for you.

13:35
Adam Yee
Definitely for sure. Sometimes my clients, they do their own like manufacturing search and sometimes the conversations that I hear from them are quite odd so to say because they find co packers through Google searches, kind of middle of the nowhere areas. So I kind of think this is more common than you think to like for a lot some of the co factors to hide information. I don't think that's a good business essentially.

13:58
Hermi Galstian
Right, yeah. You really do want that transparency for sure. Especially if this is going to be a longer term relationship, which hopefully it is because it does cost time and money and other resources to change contract manufacturers as well. So you do want that transparency. You do want somebody who is easy to talk to and listens to you because they are your partner in this and they do hold Part of your brand reputation in their hands for sure.

14:25
Adam Yee
And let's talk about this plant tour then, because I think that's really important. You're going to this factory and they are opening their doors to you for you to vet. And I think every manufacturer should give you a factory tour at the end of the day.

14:37
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. You don't have to call it an audit.

14:39
Adam Yee
Okay. Yeah. Tour might be nice. Nicer, right?

14:42
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. Tour is good.

14:43
Adam Yee
Yeah. Yeah. What do you want to look for in this tour? Like, I think one example is, like, a lot of otters look at corners like this. Or I think you mentioned, what are they like, what are they spraying stuff with? Right. I love to hear, just generally, if you were to do a factory tour and to look around, what would you generally want to see in a good manufacturing plant?

15:03
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, there's definitely levels to it. Just looking at those corners and hotspots is. Is one way, and that's good, too. So hopefully they're not just keeping you on the outside of the processing zones. You're not just, like, looking through a doorway or through a window, which I know some plants make you do that, and you can actually walk the floor. And hopefully, you know, if they're trying your product on the line, you can actually see how it's going down the line and how they're adding the ingredients and how they're mixing and all these things. So definitely first, when you arrive, how are they letting you in? Are the doors just open? Do they make you sign anything? Can anybody have access to their ingredients? Like, can anybody go in and see what the ingredients are?

15:50
Hermi Galstian
Can they see your formula that they have and they're supposed to keep safe, and then it's just accessible for anybody. So first, is that safety and security part of it?

16:00
Adam Yee
That's important. Yeah, yeah.

16:02
Hermi Galstian
And then are the doors being propped open so that people or animals can walk in? Are there little holes under the door sometimes you could see the sunlight shine through. You don't want that. If you can see the sunlight, then that means animals can get in and they can squeeze in through, like, tiny little gaps, too.

16:20
Adam Yee
Yes, yes. I've had an audit before, and we got caught, actually. Funny. I know this is embarrassing, but one of the audits that I was in charge of, there was a cat that, like, walked in, and I know. I was like, oh, my God.

16:31
Hermi Galstian
You can't claim the cat is the pest control. It's getting the mice, and the mice are there getting the roaches.

16:39
Adam Yee
Oh, my God. There you go. There you go. Luckily, we had you know, this was like a third party, like kind of pre audit, before the audit, so to say. But that is something like. Okay, then you have to like investigate, where'd this cat come from? Why is there a cat here? We found them in the perimeters and so like we had their pest control team like put like anti cat bait or something like that to get the cats going away. It's just rats are the same. Birds can crawl through holes. Yep. And so you have to net them. So it's just like. It is. The pest controls part is actually like a really important thing to like observe.

17:09
Hermi Galstian
Oh yeah.

17:10
Adam Yee
In a plant, I think. And it's pretty easy. A lot of them have pet boxes right in the perimeter, like Ecolab or something like that. That's important to kind of see what kind of resources they're investing in a plant. Right, yeah.

17:22
Hermi Galstian
And pest control can also go hand in hand with sanitation. So if you have spills, if you have residue of product that was made two days ago just sitting there, that's going to attract all sorts of animals.

17:33
Adam Yee
Yeah. Like still water, right? Yeah, yeah. Just there's so many things in the plant. Right. And so what else do you kind of recommend when someone like walks through and does a tour? Should they ask certain questions like during the tour, so to say. I'd love to hear just what you generally observed.

17:50
Hermi Galstian
One thing I'll say is look up. A lot of people forget to look up.

17:54
Adam Yee
That's true. Yeah, actually. Yeah, that's very true.

17:56
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. You'll see. You might see cobwebs, you might see things dangling by like a hair that could fall in. Especially if it's above Food products. Yeah, yeah. So definitely questions you should be asking, you should be talking. Hopefully there are team members there on the floor and see how they receive you. Do they make eye contact? Do they acknowledge the presence of somebody who doesn't work there? So you want them to notice when there's a non employee presence because if it's not you, it could be somebody else who is not like a good guy.

18:29
Adam Yee
That's true.

18:30
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. You want them to notice that, hey, somebody's here. So I always try to like make eye contact and say hello and see how that is going. And you want people who hopefully like if they see a problem, they're not afraid to speak up. And that tells you a lot about the Food safety culture of that facility that people are noticing issues and they're so speaking up about it. You don't want them to just like try to hide things.

18:54
Adam Yee
Yeah. And I think on that note, with employees, like, you know, we as Food scientists understand, like, proper hygiene and washing your hands and hair nets and sometimes smocks are important too. Right. And you want to get a feel of that as well for the employees, if they're properly trained. Right?

19:09
Hermi Galstian
Oh, yeah. I've been in places when they're like, oh, it's okay, you don't have to wear the thing or put on the hair net.

19:15
Adam Yee
Oh, really? The hair net?

19:16
Hermi Galstian
And I'll be like, wait, no, you should apply the rule to everybody. Like, don't treat. We're not special. Like, even the owner of the facility should be following all the rules, ideally.

19:26
Adam Yee
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I do know some owners who don't follow the rules. But yeah, I think that's like, really important. Right. Because even though maybe Food scientists and QA people, like, we have very strict rules about, like, proper hygiene, good manufacturing practices. Right. And I think that needs to kind of follow through. And it is. Oh, well, at least one I've noticed with a lot of Food safety projects, it is a good plant. When you teach, like, the manufacturing workers good hygiene, Right?

19:50
Hermi Galstian
Yes. So I don't like seeing the hand wash station blocked by boxes or a dolly or something because that just tells me there isn't frequent access there. Same thing with bathrooms. You want them to be clear and clean and well stocked and accessible. So there should be soap in the soap dispenser, There should be hot water. So like, wash your hands for more than just a few seconds and really feel like, is there actually hot water here?

20:17
Adam Yee
Yeah, for sure. That's very important. I mean, hot water goes with everything in a Food facility. Right. You need to not only use it to wash your hands to kill germs, but also to clean the facility itself, right?

20:26
Hermi Galstian
Oh, yeah. So you want to also look at all the nooks and crannies on, like the conveyor belts and tumblers and kettles and mixers and things like that. Because especially like in the mixers, when there's like a shaft spinning inside or like an agitator of some sort, you'll be surprised at things that get stuck on that, whether it's Food residue or even like cleaning materials. It could be a piece of a towel. It could be like a plastic bristle from a brush. Hopefully no, like metal pieces because that'll be super dangerous.

20:57
Adam Yee
Yeah, hopefully. It's a metal detector, right?

20:59
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, yeah. Metal detector or X ray. Ideally they have some of those and also preventing. So not just like catching these foreign materials that could end up in your product, but the prevention of it. So I like to look at plastic pieces, like spatulas. Do they have any little pieces hanging on or like chips? Chips. Like, where did that piece go? Another question I like to ask is, hey, what's your pre op check? Like, what do you look at on the equipment before you run our product? I want to know if they're looking, are all the nuts and bolts in place or did one of them fall off? When did it fall off? During cleaning while they were making your product? Has it been missing for five years? And we just never replace it because we don't need it.

21:43
Hermi Galstian
And hopefully all of that is documented somewhere as well.

21:46
Adam Yee
Yeah, I would say just in the background. All factories have to do a Food safety plan for manufacturing Food. And generally that includes all of those processes, all of those kind of risk factors, all in one. So this is a standard practice all factories should be doing when they're making Food, right?

22:02
Hermi Galstian
Yes, yes. So these are all the processes that they should have in place to prevent the issues.

22:08
Adam Yee
Yeah, we just want to hear some insider, like, info that could help brands with whatever. Right. And Food safety is a really important thing and so is quality. Right?

22:17
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. So one thing I like to look at fairly closely is ingredients.

22:21
Adam Yee
Okay.

22:22
Hermi Galstian
So whether you're supplying the ingredients as the brand or your manufacturer is sourcing and purchasing those for you, and where they're being stored, are they being stored on sites? And so I like to really look into that. How are they receiving those ingredients? Are they making sure that it is actually the ingredient that you want? Are they getting it from the suppliers that you chose? Because sometimes, oh, it wasn't available at your preferred supplier, so we just got it from somewhere else. But we don't realize often that could change a lot. For example, if you have, let's say, a product for a sensitive population or like an allergen issue, you want to make sure that the ingredient supplier has been vetted according to your brand standards before it's substituted in your product.

23:09
Hermi Galstian
Because we don't know how that could affect the safety or quality of the product.

23:13
Adam Yee
Yeah, 100% agree with that. And in terms of like a documentation per ingredient, like, what do you generally ask for as a quality? Right, so we usually ask for a specification sheet, nutritional facts for nutrition, label. I know some people like to ask for country of origin. I'd love to hear, like, are there any other documents that you think are really important when it comes to like, making a Food product?

23:35
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. So it's gonna depend on your Product and what you're claiming.

23:38
Adam Yee
Yeah, that's true.

23:39
Hermi Galstian
Let's not forget about that.

23:40
Adam Yee
That's very true. Yeah, yeah, that's a whole nother story.

23:43
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, that's a whole other podcast. And then what other certifications you're getting. Is your product going to be non GMO certified? Is it going to be kosher? Is it going to be organic? Is it going to be seed oil free? How do you prove that there's a trend for you?

23:57
Adam Yee
Yeah, yeah, I hear that a lot.

23:59
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, there's a certification now for that.

24:01
Adam Yee
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's one non ultra processed.

24:03
Hermi Galstian
Yes, yes, that's another one. And then healthy. What is the definition of healthy? So making sure all of your ingredients will support. Support the claims or certifications you're making for your product as well as microbiological. Sometimes we see just like a general thing, but sometimes I want to see specifically addressing the risks of your ingredient, of your product as a whole, and of the way you're packaging and selling it. So these different risk factors will affect what you're testing on the ingredients. So you might want to test Listeria salmonella is like more pathogens.

24:38
Adam Yee
Yeah, well, you know, this is an interesting thing. So generally, most ingredients have a certificate of analysis, right? Like a snapshot per batch. And sometimes they list something called APC count or aerobic plate count. But sometimes I think the numbers can scare a lot of brands, for instance, because the number can be big. And if the powder, maybe it's okay for it to be big. I'd love to hear some advice on that, I guess, to say.

25:02
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, so everything's gonna be based on risk, hopefully. So it depends if your product has a kill step or not. Are you heating it up? Are those numbers supposed to go down or are they supposed to stay up? What is considered safe for that ingredient and your product specifically? And what is considered safe for who you're feeding? So if you're making products for children or if you're making products that you market to people who have compromised immune systems. So everything is relative. So I hate to be one of those people who are like, it depends.

25:36
Adam Yee
Yeah, yeah, I was going to say that. I was going to make a joke about that. Every Food safety consultant I've ever talked to has literally the word like locked and loaded. It depends. It does depend, right?

25:45
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, it does.

25:46
Adam Yee
Yeah, it does. Yeah, It's. Fortunately, Food safety and quality is pretty complex. There's a lot of nuance and a lot of kind of background science behind figuring out Food safety. And quality. So it's really hard to have. There's kind of a standard structure, but the playbook between every product is quite different, right?

26:04
Hermi Galstian
Oh, definitely, yes.

26:06
Adam Yee
Love it. We're going to wrap up here, Jeremy, but I'd love to hear, like, how can we find you? What do you do for brands if they were to approach you and just a general pitch about what you do?

26:15
Hermi Galstian
Yeah. So the Food QA supports CPG Food brands with Food safety, quality prevention and then also jumping over any hurdles that usually come up. And our goal is to have a little QA person here on your shoulder.

26:31
Adam Yee
Like angel on your shoulder?

26:32
Hermi Galstian
Yeah, like whisper. A good angel, kind of whispering in your ear. Like, look at that and ask for this document and look in the corner. So my goal is to have a little bit of QA and to leave everybody with a little bit of QA.

26:45
Adam Yee
Love it. Love it.

26:46
Hermi Galstian
Inside their head. Yeah. And then you can find me on thefood QA.com you can find me on LinkedIn and yeah, I'm the Food QA everywhere.

26:55
Adam Yee
Love it. All right, well, Ari, thanks so much for educating us on Food safety and quality.

26:59
Hermi Galstian
Thank you. Yeah, it's important.

27:02
Adam Yee
Thank you for listening to startup CPG's R&D RADIO. I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation. We've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast. I'm proud to be part of the team that's part of the top globally ranked podcast in cb. As you may know, we're not just a podcast, we're a community of brands and experts and you should join. You can sign up @startupcbg.com and you'll then get invited to our online Slack community and be informed on great guests and amazing networking opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. Thank you for listening and have a great day.