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Tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode of Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast. Join Francine L. Shaw, the savvy CEO of Savvy Food Safety, and Matthew Regusci, compliance connoisseur and founder of Fostering Compliance, as they serve up the latest in food safety with a side of laughter.
Explore the ins and outs of food systems, responsible food practices, and food safety regulations. Stay informed about food safety awareness and the not-so-occasional food recall. Delve deep into the complexities of the food supply chain with our dynamic duo, who blend expert insights with a pinch of food safety humor. Whether you're knee-deep in the food safety industry or just passionate about what's on your plate, this podcast promises a fresh take on staying safe while eating well.
Expect candid conversations, personal anecdotes, and occasional guest appearances that spice up the discussion. Shaw and Regusci bring their combined decades of experience to the table, making each episode as informative as it is entertaining. From industry trends to must-know food safety news and regulations, they've got your back (and your lunch).
In essence, Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast is not just about imparting information; it's about fostering a culture of food safety. By shedding light on the intricacies of the food supply chain and the latest food safety news, it aims to promote awareness and encourage responsible food practices among consumers and industry professionals alike.
When it comes to food safety, knowledge is power, and a good laugh is the best seasoning. At the heart of every episode is one golden rule: Don't Eat Poop!
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Matt: [00:00:00] The amount of people affected in these outbreaks are massive, right? So the cyclospora alone is like up to like over 30,000 now. Is that right?
Francine: Mm-hmm. That- that's the last number I read, was over 30,000. Again, those aren't reporting to the CDC. The CDC's not reporting that. Yeah. That's their individual
Matt: state.
Enough that I saw on TikTok that someone got a costume that had like a Taylor Farms bag of iceberg lettuce, and in the caption was, "The scariest costume this Halloween." Ah, it's crazy.
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 Elshaar and Matt Regusci for a deep dive into food safety. [00:01:00] It all boils down to one golden rule: don't eat poop.
Don't eat poop.
Matt: Hello, hello, Francine.
Francine: Morning, Matt.
Matt: Good morning, good morning. Well, there was a lot of texting back and forth this weekend, a lot of memes.
Francine: Yeah.
Matt: Francine sent over a food pyramid, and basically nobody can eat anything right now. The whole pyramid is taken over by recalls. It's... Okay, so I did a little research this weekend, and we have, 'cause it feels like there is an abnormal amount of recalls, food recalls this summer Can you hear me, Francine?
Okay, so fun fact about Francine is that she wears hearing aids. She stares at your mouth because she also wants to read your lips. So if there's any [00:02:00] technical difficulties of delays going on, where voice is happening and my lips are not moving or vice versa, makes it a little complicated to communicate, doesn't it, Francine?
Francine: It sure does. The ventriloquism thing is not working.
Matt: Uh, okay. So there was a lot of memes that went between Francine and I this weekend. A lot of memes. The whole internet is on fire right now because there are just an abnormal amount of outbreaks happening, and they're bad.
Francine: And they're really bad. I mean, so, so it's not necessarily that there's an abnormal number of outbreaks.
I think the number of outbreaks were, like, on par with the number of outbreaks. It's the number of people that are getting sick from these outbreaks, right? We have a lot of simultaneous outbreaks happening right at the moment. I think there's only like 21 outbreaks so far year to [00:03:00] date. Am I right?
Matt: Yes.
There's 21 outbreaks year to date. So just as a data point, because there was a reporter that put this all together outside of Food Safety News, which I'll put the link down below. But as of August of 2026, there have been around 21 outbreaks, and just to put that into perspective slightly more, but the amount of people affected in these outbreaks are massive, right?
So the cyclospora alone is like up to like over 30,000 now. Is that right?
Francine: Mm-hmm. That, that's the last number I read was over 30,000. Again, those aren't reporting to the CDC. The CDC's not- Yeah ... reporting that. That's their individual-
Matt: Enough that I saw on TikTok that someone got a costume that had like a Taylor Farms bag of iceberg lettuce, [00:04:00] and in the caption was, "The scariest costume this Halloween."
Ah, it's crazy. It's crazy. And then Francine, you sent over... Explain the food pyramid that you sent over to me.
Francine: It said the new food pyramid, and it had the food pyramid in the triangle, and it, every one of them had recalled on top of it. It was all just recalled, recalled, recalled. So in other words, we basically can't get anything that's in the food pyramid because everything's been recalled.
Matt: And if you go look at the TikTok stew, like people at restaurants, like fake restaurants like, "Um, yes, I would like to get a salad. Oh, I can't get that, right?"
Francine: So the one that I sent you, I love that guy. He is absolutely hysterical. And I follow him, and he starts ordering from the menu, and he's like, "Oh, wait, I can't have that.
That's been recalled. Okay. So I'll have this," and it's like, "Oh, wait, no, um, that's been recalled as well." And he goes through this whole list, and everything that he's [00:05:00] trying to order is on the recall list. Although we're not, we're not ordering that now either. Okay. So it is funny. It's also not funny. It's actually very sad that we're in this position right now
Matt: So as of June 3rd, okay, we have a cyclospora outbreak in most likely all of them are going to be tied to iceberg lettuce.
We have listeria tied to soft ricotta cheese. We have salmonella tied to eggs. We have botulism tied to infant formula. We have cyclospora again, because they keep separating all these into individual cases because they're not quote, "linked to Taco Bell," but okay, they're probably still linked to iceberg lettuce.
We have E. coli not identified to anything yet. We have E. coli identified to frozen blueberries. We [00:06:00] have salmonella not identified to anything yet. We have cyclospora, cyclospora, cyclospora. They're all like making these different cases, by the way, which is funny. One of them tied to iceberg lettuce. We have listeria, still researching where this is coming from.
We have salmonella tied to jalapenos. We have cyclospora, cyclospora, and then we have salmonella, a new case of salmonella that just got opened up August 12th And consumers are like, "What is going on? What can I eat?" And because the, the reaction from the government is so freaking slow on these that people are just getting sick, and they don't even know what they can and cannot eat.
And when they find out, they're like, "Oh my gosh, but w- is it gone? Is it still in the supply chain? What's going on?" Diabetes is gonna go up. We're gonna have an outbreak of diabetes because nobody's gonna wanna eat produce. The hell [00:07:00] with the fruits and vegetables. McDonald's stock goes up significantly.
Then everybody forgets that there was, like, an onion outbreak last year with those. I would like a Big Mac with no onions, please, and no lettuce and french fries. I don't think there's any outbreak tied to french fries, right? That was frozen and fried. That should be good. A couple 5-log reductions. All right, we're good.
Oh, man. It's so bad.
Francine: We'd be talking about the eggs right now if the lettuce wasn't so bad because the eggs are bad, too. The lettuce is so bad that the egg- the eggs are kinda just sliding under the radar.
Matt: Oh my gosh. Hey, food industry. Okay, listen. Francine and I do not lack for content, but we would really like it if these outbreaks came out every other month or so, so we could keep up with them.
Plus, you know what? It makes it really hard for Francine and I to actually film, like, a couple a week when literally there's a new recall every s- we can't build up a [00:08:00] queue of, of podcasts because there's something new every week. Okay. There are so many going on, and Francine and I keep up on this all the time, that literally we were overwhelmed today.
We were like, this weekend we were talking about what we were gonna do. We're like, literally like, "Do we talk... Which, which one do we talk about?" We're like, "Okay, we have to talk about them all." But, but there's so many of them.
Francine: We have a backlog of people that we wanna interview that are waiting to be on the podcast that I keep promising, like, "I'm gonna schedule you," but the freaking outbreaks won't stop.
These outbreaks, so that we can... Of course, you know, we could talk to all these people about the current outbreak situation if they're not afraid. Oftentimes people don't wanna talk about the outbreaks. I don't know.
Matt: Right. We would l- normally, like, have Bill Marler on to talk about these, but he's so damn busy.
Like, I think he wakes up at 2:00 in the morning and then goes to sleep at midnight [00:09:00] because he has so many damn victims to represent right now that he doesn't have time. It's... This is insane. Okay, I-
Francine: I bet it would be fascinating to be working for him right now. Maybe he's hiring.
Matt: Maybe he's hiring.
Francine: Calling.
Matt: I don't know if I would ever wanna work for him. I think his team probably works around the clock He works around the clock. Okay, you know what we haven't talked about too, which is crazy as well, because there's so much stuff going on with all the bacterial side of stuff, all the pathogens side of stuff.
We also haven't talked about who's been in the news with other things, like Driscoll in the news with the whole pesticides and PFAS stuff. So like poor berries, man. They're being beat up this summer. Blueberries, frozen blueberries, pesticides, and PFAS. Francine is like, "Wait, what's going on with..." 'Cause we, we didn't even talk about that because there was so much stuff going on with the-
Francine: Is this about the [00:10:00] greenwash?
Matt: Yes. So they had in July, they had like a, an employee do a whistleblower thing.
Francine: It didn't disclose its conventional strawberries contained residues of-
Matt: Yeah Yeah, which is crazy. So I learned that I did a bunch of research this weekend and found out that the pesticide industry, they put PFAS on pesticides.
And so those forever chemicals are now... I did not realize this, and that's, this is sad that I didn't realize this because I literally test for this, but I did not. We don't, we don't test for PFAS, yes, but we test for pesticides, and we've been- You will be soon ... we've been finding more pesticides. But those, those PFAS is like everywhere, man.
And obviously it's a forever chemical. It doesn't disappear. And so if you're literally spraying this on the field and on the crops, it's not going to go [00:11:00] anywhere. Okay, so we have definitely talked about the cyclospora one to death, but the egg one, maybe we should talk about the egg one. I mean, the cyclospora numbers just keep growing.
So I think we're up to over 30,000 cyclospora cases, and-
Francine: That was the last number that I saw. It was over 30,000.
Matt: And that's just the reported cases.
Francine: It has not stopped growing, though.
Matt: Yeah, I don't understand. So when I was looking at this, I was trying to figure out, has it not stopped growing because more and more states are reporting what they're finding, like reporting it?
They started looking for it, and then they started reporting more of it, and so it's just like the backlog of cases being reported? Or is it continuing to grow in terms of more and more victims every single week? I don't know. Because, you know, our system is kinda slow on reporting. Yeah, the egg [00:12:00] recall started in July, end of July, and Midwest Poultry Services recalled 1.6 million dozen shelled eggs due to possible salmonella contamination.
Francine: That's 19 million eggs. 19 million eggs.
Matt: That is so many eggs.
Francine: Like visualize how many eggs that is. That is a lot of eggs
Matt: And then they show the box in the recall, okay? The boxes are like Sunups premium quality eggs, the foam thing of jumbo eggs, the Country Morning eggs in like another foam shell. And it's, and it just shows the normal cardboard boxes that eggs come in, and it's like, "And these, too."
And I'm like, oh my gosh, every egg looks like that. Like every dozen eggs looks like that. Okay. [00:13:00] Do you, Francine, do you eat a lot of eggs?
Francine: I do not. My husband does. I don't eat a lot of eggs.
Matt: My house goes through four to six dozen eggs a week. Wow. I know.
Francine: We don't buy eggs.
Matt: Oh, do you have your own chickens?
Francine: My son does. Ah. My son and my mother-in-law both have eggs, so we don't buy, we don't buy eggs.
Matt: That's nice. I used to have that when I was a kid.
Francine: So we're not part of the recall.
Matt: I live in a, a neighborhood that frowns on, uh, having chickens.
Francine: Every now and then, you can go through seasonal where the e- chickens don't lay a lot of eggs for whatever reason, or they're, you know, trying to get new chickens into a flock, and I'll buy some eggs at the grocery store.
But it's pretty rare that I actually buy eggs. And like meat, I don't buy meat either.
Matt: Yeah. All these recalls, you're like, "I don't have to worry about them, 'cause I have my [00:14:00] own food." And then the salmonella in jalapeno peppers from Sinaloa, Mexico. So the- poor Mexico has gotten beat up this summer too, man, between cyclospora and salmonella and-
Francine: And that's gotta be hurting their economy.
Matt: Yeah, because a huge portion of their economy is produce sold to the US.
Francine: So-
Matt: Man ...
Francine: I wonder if it was only the lettuce that came, was shipped out, exported, or if anybody was in Mexico got sick from the lettuce as well.
Matt: Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not sure if that processing plant sells domestically into Mexico or just goes out into the US.
Francine: Or was it simply a Taylor Farms- Plant
Matt: Yeah, and all the people in Mexico are probably like, "You wimps. We deal with this all the time. These parasites are like our pets. We have [00:15:00] them all the time. It's no problem at all."
Francine: Or what do you mean there's a problem with the water? We drink it every day.
Matt: You Americans are, are wimps.
You guys have sterilized everything to the point where you guys can't even handle these parasites. What's going on? Can't even breathe the
Francine: air. What's the matter with you?
Matt: Okay, so that, the jalapeno outbreak affected a whole lot of people and states.
Francine: Because, well, I don't know if that list is still growing or not, but that's because the jalapenos were chopped up and put into everything.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. God, I love jalapenos. I love jalapenos.
Francine: I mean, and they were chopped up and put into... Every day something new is being added, added to the list, because those jalapenos were not just sold as jalapenos, they were chopped and sliced and diced and grated and-
Matt: And yeah, and they were put into a salsa meant for, for Chipotle.
And poor Chipotle. Poor Chipotle's like, "We just got us the [00:16:00] news. We were doing just good. We were doing so fine. Why you got to be selling us these crappy jalapenos? What's going on? Come on, we just lowered the marketing budget. What are you doing?" But I love Chipotle. Oh my gosh.
Francine: I like Chipotle as well, but I've not eaten there since, not because I'm afraid to eat there, I'm not afraid to eat there-
Matt: Oh, you know what's, you know Chipotle is great.
Okay, so if you have a large family, Chipotle catering is absolutely amazing. We would just get the f- They're like, "Oh, are you having a party?" "No, we're just feeding my family." You get like all the stuff to make tacos and, and stuff, like the beans, the rice, the different types of meat, and yeah, my kids will eat that for like two days.
It's awesome. Yeah, all the different salsas. But yeah, so the jalapeno outbreak, the states that affected it, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, [00:17:00] Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
I think it would've been easier to name the states it didn't affect versus the states that it did. Oh my gosh So many. Yeah. And they, okay, so this is just part of our system, right? Because we have massive suppliers of produce that provide a ton of different retailers and food service companies, distributors produce, and we have national and international grocery chains, although international, their supply chain's different than national, of the supply chain.
So then they go into their distribution. They take these jalapenos, they chop it up, they [00:18:00] make a whole bunch of different salsas, or they'll, if they're making it in the restaurant, they're sending in the same jalapenos to every restaurant across the nation, or depending upon where their supply chain distribution is, half the nation, and then all of a sudden they're chopping up these same jalapenos, making it in all the...
And, and it affects all these different states. Because our produce, people talk about, like, food miles and all this different type of stuff, and there's this huge movement to try to buy local, and I think there's a lot of people that still try to do that. But if you go and you eat out at a restaurant or you go to a grocery store and buy your produce there, it's been distributed from the same supplier to multiple different places, and that's why it affects so many states.
Francine: So we've gone from all these small regional producers You know, where there was an opportunity that maybe wouldn't be effective to, they were bought by the larger companies, and now it's what you just said. [00:19:00]
Matt: Right. Like my grandpa and my, my grandfather-in-law were truck farmers. So what did that mean? You basically grew crop, you picked the crop, and then you took it to a market, like a local market, and then you sold your crop at an auction, and then the grocery stores and stuff like that that were there, and restaurants, would buy the produce right there, right?
And then they go, we have a diversion of this still alive called terminal market, but those terminal markets are local markets that barely anybody knows about, that just buys the produce that nobody else wants. Like, okay, so if you are Walmart, Costco, Sysco, blah, blah, blah, you grade your product at the distribution facility.
You have a contract with these major marketing companies. So in the produce industry, they call them marketing companies. And so those marketing companies are like Taylor Farms, Dole, Driscoll, et cetera, et [00:20:00] cetera. Name the produce, and I can tell you the marketing company. Then, you know, like, uh, they have a contract for X amount of cases of product every single week across the year, and they'll buy like half of the produce at a contracted rate and then the other half maybe at a market rate.
So produce is just like any other commodity. The price of the produce market for whatever that commodity is changes every single day, every single week. It goes up and down depending on the season, right? So they'll buy a certain amount at contract rate and they'll buy a certain amount floating at whatever the market rate is.
And they have produce grades. So I'm only gonna buy it at X amount at A grade, X amount of B grade, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, if it's like C grade or if there's too much B grade, then they're like, "Hey, I can't... I'm not, you're not fulfilling your contract. We're gonna send this produce back." Well, the marketing companies don't take the produce back.
What they a lot of times do is they will sell it to a terminal [00:21:00] market, okay? And so like Detroit has a terminal market, LA has a terminal market, Chicago has a terminal market, Boston has a terminal market, and it's these huge multiple football fields- Tulley has
Francine: one ...
Matt: size, yeah, marketplaces where people have stalls and then like grocery stores will, and small mom-and-pop grocery stores and small restaurants will go and they'll buy that produce at like 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, and then they'll go throw it in the back of their truck and then take it to their restaurant or whatever.
Okay, so those terminal markets They're not buying local produce. They're buying what retailers and the food service companies don't want. So even goes like if you're going to like a small mom and pop, unless that restaurant says, "I bought it from this farmer down the street," because they're using it in marketing, they probably got their produce at like a terminal market or something like that.
So when there is an outbreak, one of the hardest things is to recall it from these different places, because it's... You could go tell the terminal market, "Hey, listen, we need [00:22:00] to recall that produce." And the terminal market's like, "Well, I just sold it to like 100 different small mom-and-pop restaurants." And then they call up those like mom-and-pop restaurants and be like, "Hey, that produce that you...
that we just gave you two days ago, well, we think that there might be salmonella in that product." They're like, "Well, we already turned it into a salsa, and then gave it to all of our consumers, so good luck," right? Like, it's gone.
Francine: And this is why we, this is why we talk about approved suppliers.
Matt: Yes.
Francine: In retail.
Matt: Okay, but even then, their approved supplier is a terminal market.
Francine: Matt, no, because there's no traceability.
Matt: There is traceability. There is traceability. There is traceability. If I'm a restaurant, and I say that my supplier for produce is this terminal market- Please, just
Francine: wait a minute. Wait a minute Do these people, are they gonna have a hazard plan for going to pick that stuff up in the back of their truck?
Who's liable? Who's liable? Is that, that [00:23:00] produce market gonna accept accountability when there's an outbreak?
Matt: I mean, define accept accountability. They're gonna push it off to their supplier, who's gonna be a major retailer. Well, who- And they're gonna push, push it off to them. So everybody knows like, okay, if there is an outbreak, okay, and this, let's just use this scenario.
Let's say Jalapeno Marketing Company sold jalapenos to retailer, major box retailer A, okay? Major box retailer A says, "Oh, this doesn't meet our grade. You need to come grab that produce." Okay, so that marketing company now takes that produce and sells it to the terminal market. That is totally tracked via an invoice, right?
So that is traceability. They can say, "Oh, so we took this load from distributor A, sold it to terminal market A," and there is a transaction. That transaction is part of the traceability, okay? And [00:24:00] it's not like it's like they sell it to the terminal market. They sell it to a distributor on the terminal market.
So there could be like 20, 30, 40 individual companies that are buying and selling produce.
Francine: Do you think Chipotle's buying their stuff from the terminal market?
Matt: Oh, probably, sometimes. This is another thing, too.
Francine: Do you think they're going to pick it up from the terminal market?
Matt: Yes, because here's the thing.
In that terminal market, it's not like the company is Alameda Terminal Market, like in LA, okay? They don't call it Alameda... They're not selling it to Alameda Terminal Market. They're selling it to Central Coast distributors at the Alameda Terminal Market. And so then that- Individual company may have one or 10, 20 bays in this terminal market.
So that is a direct distributor they're selling that produce to, but it's also a direct distributor that they're buying that product [00:25:00] from. Okay, so if for instance, let's just say marketing company sold jalapenos to retailer. Retailer, it didn't make their grade. They told that company, "Go pick it up and then sell it to whomever you want to."
They sell it to the distribution, the terminal market distribution. Sometimes the buyers, the produce buyers, will be like, "Okay, jalapeno supplier A, sell it to this terminal market bay over here, Central Coast Distributing or whatever," right? Then that buyer will call Central Coast Distributing and say, "Listen, I don't have enough jalapenos, so I'm gonna buy these jalapenos from you as a C grade price, because I need jalapenos to service my restaurant, to service my chain or to service my grocery store."
And so then they'll buy it at a reduced price from that same distributor that they told the jalapeno supplier to sell [00:26:00] to at a lower price. It is what happens. I'm telling you though, they do buy. Those retailers and food service companies will buy from the terminal market, because they need the produce less shelf.
Francine: You're talking about a distributor- Yes ... picking up and delivering to a re- That, that's different than somebody taking their pickup truck or whatever to the produce terminal and taking it back to their facility
Matt: Yes, but you have to remember it's not
Francine: the- I'm saying they don't do it. They do do it.
Matt: Right.
Francine: They do do it.
Matt: They totally do it, but there is a transaction. So if I'm a restaurant, like I'm a mom-and-pop restaurant, I have like four restaurants, and every morning at 3:00 in the morning I send my truck down to the Alameda Market in LA to
Francine: go- My pickup truck ...
Matt: my pickup truck, the back of my car. Like, there's a lot of different ways.
Okay, so, and I've seen this 'cause I've been to these markets multiple, multiple times- I'm not saying- ... and I've seen this happen ...
Francine: they don't do it.
Matt: What?
Francine: They do do it.
Matt: They do do it, 100%. I've seen it [00:27:00] happen. Now, you have companies that bring trucks in, and it's a full cold chain, and then you have mom-and-pop restaurants and stuff like that that is not.
But there is a transaction. So what I'm telling you is there's two separate things. One, they 100% are correct for traceability because each of those individual distributors on the terminal market, they'll have like three or four that they go to every morning, and they'll check the produce out. They'll see if it meets their quality expectations, and they will buy the produce from-
Francine: What I'm telling you, there's so much liability involved in them doing that.
They- What I- ... are not supposed to be doing... It is not acceptable. They are not approved suppliers
Matt: They are approved suppliers.
Francine: In the-
Matt: They are approved suppliers because they are, they are a distributor. So there's two separate conversations here. One is, are they breaking traceability? No, they are not breaking traceability.
Two is, are they breaking the cold chain? Most likely they're breaking the cold chain when they're sticking the produce in the back [00:28:00] of their truck or their back of their SUV or Oldsmobile, whatever it is, or putting it in the trunk of their car. They're breaking the cold chain. But traceability, no. Each of those distributors that they're buying that produce from is an FDA...
They have an FDA number. They're approved. They just happen to be on the terminal market- Right ... that they're buying it from.
Francine: That's fine. However, the liability involved in them doing that is absolutely insane.
Matt: Yes. Well, yeah. And it's one of those things that like everybody knows. Okay, everybody in the industry, in the produce industry- That understands supply chain, okay?
'Cause not everybody understands this. But everybody in the produce industry that understands supply chain knows that these terminal markets exist. They are their own distributors. They have a business license. They are definitely selling to these mom-and-pop stores, as well as major chains, and is cold chain being broken [00:29:00] by a lot of these mom-and-pops?
Yes. Is
Francine: traceability?
Matt: No We're having multiple conversations here. Yes. This is a total rabbit hole.
Francine: They also run out to the local grocery store- Yep ... and pick up things when they run out of them as well.
Matt: 100%.
Francine: Those aren't approved suppliers either-
Matt: But
Francine: they could- ... for resale.
Matt: You could... Oh, for resale. I
Francine: don't- Well, I'm not saying that it's not, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that the product they're buying isn't safe to consume.
But for what they're doing, they are not their approved suppliers for multiple reasons.
Matt: Right.
Francine: We're talking about two different industries. We're t- and that's where we're having a disconnect.
Matt: Uh, yes. Totally, totally agree with you. And I remember too, like at, when I was a manager at Starbucks, and we would run out of something, and I would be calling the different stores to see if I can get whatever, and they're like, "No, like, it's crazy weekend.
We r- we're running out of stuff too." And I had to, like, go either, I had one of two choices. One, I [00:30:00] could tell everybody, "Listen, we no longer have this product anymore to sell," and if it's milk, it's like every product that we do at Starbucks, right? Or I could go down the street, like across the parking lot, and go buy milk.
I went and bought milk. And then, and I was like, "Okay, well, my regional director is not going to be happy about this, but at the same time, I'm gonna go do that," right? This is way before, I mean, I knew food safety. I took ServSafe, but that was about as far as my food safety knowledge went. I was like, "Whatever."
I didn't know traceability. I just went to the grocery store and did it, and then it was like, "I'll ask for forgiveness later." But yeah. Was that appro- my approved supplier at Starbucks? For sure it was not my approved supplier at Starbucks. Was I gonna get in trouble? For sure I was gonna get in trouble, 'cause Starbucks, like, tracks every single thing.
Francine: There was a franchise, they sold [00:31:00] egg salad. The guy went out They, they ran out. The guy went out and bought some egg salad from another location, a grocery store or something, put it in the trunk of his car
Matt: Oh, geez
Francine: It was like 100 degrees outside
Matt: Stop
Francine: He left it in the trunk of his car for I don't know how long.
Took it into the store. They sold that egg salad after it had been in the trunk of his car. People got sick, very sick
Matt: Wow
Francine: He lost his franchise
Matt: Yeah, I bet. This is so bad on so many levels. Okay, so going back to Starbucks, this was Starbucks like 25 years ago, 27 years, almost 30. Holy cow, I'm getting old.
Years ago when I was... We had just come out with sandwiches. We were like the guinea pig store. Francine, you probably know this too, like any store that does really, really well, and they know, they're [00:32:00] like, "Okay, a new item isn't going to screw this store up." They run a tight ship. They're doing everything well.
This is your guinea pig, right? And so I loved it. I loved being the guinea pig. We were one of the first drive-through restaurants, and I had to help them like figure out, no, drive-throughs are actually two stores. I need to have staff for two stores. Like we are literally running two simultaneous operations.
They learned that, and then we did sandwiches. Starbucks was so, so worried that homeless people were going to eat the sandwiches at the end of the night that we had to unwrap every sandwich and throw it away individually. So 'cause the sandwiches are all wrapped, right? We had to like write on there, "Do not eat," on the plastic, then take it out of the plastic and throw it away.
Like, so like if they saw the individual plastic wrap that was there, it was like, "Do [00:33:00] not eat," but there's nothing in it. It was like the food safety expectations at Starbucks were, almost 30 years ago, were abnormally good
Francine: So this is the difference in our demographic. We had to worry about snakes under our dumpster
Matt: There weren't a lot of snakes in Santa Maria, California.
There were, but they were rattlesnakes, and they weren't anywhere near our restaurants.
Francine: Yeah, we had s- snakes under the dumpster
Matt: Homeless people, yeah, we had a
lot
Matt: of that, but not snakes.
Francine: No. We had snakes, big snakes. They were black snakes, so the guys would like throw them in the woods, but oh, oh, oh, boy-
Matt: Okay.
Francine: Well, I think we, uh- ... we have gone way off from the Cyclospora and the 10, 30,000 sick people when we started
Matt: Yeah, 100%. All right, well, there you go. There's an overview of all the outbreaks Or Mexico. They are being beat. So much of the produce right now that are getting people sick are coming from that.
Except for eggs. That is local. Salmonella. All right. [00:34:00] On that note, don't eat poop