Website Serves Up Food Safety Information | Two-person team diversifies business into training
Photo/Amanda Roberge
ON THE MENU: Susan Reef, founder of USFoodSafety.com, brought on Bruce Rubin as CEO to help run the business side of the company.
It seems reasonable to imagine that behind the extensive listings at USFoodSafety.com is a very efficient search engine trolling through pages to find the latest food recalls and updates.
But that work is being done by none other than USFoodSafety.com’s founder and president, Susan Reef. She updates her Marlborough-based website after twice-daily visits to more than 120 other sites, pulling together all the information that an average consumer might need to know.
“We try to make the site very consumer friendly and put everything in layman’s terms,” said Reef.
Reef prides herself on being something of a public servant, and identifies more with being a valuable aide to her followers — now nearly 100,000 strong on Twitter — than as a modern-day businesswoman. She has developed a classification system of alerts over the past three years in business, and her goal is to be a wealth of information without inundating people with messages about products they do not use.
For example, alerts on high-priority recalls for contaminated foods that are potentially fatal — like a recent peanut butter recall — will be sent directly to your mobile phone or can be found on Twitter under the handle @FoodSafeGuru. Matters that are less imposing, like a recall based on a packaging defect that is not likely to result in anyone getting hurt, will be posted directly to the site for visitors’ perusal.
“Products get recalled for all kinds of reasons and not everything is worth worrying about,” she said, “But if it’s made by Nestle or if it’s on the shelves at Kroger or Walmart, I’ll let everyone know.”
The majority of the business’s income is through advertising sales from the website, so a goal has been to keep the site fresh and unique while maintaining the content visitors have come to expect. For example, the site now includes an interactive element called “Ask Heidi,” where visitors can pose their own food-safety questions.
“We think (Ask) Heidi is a very important part of what we do,” Reef said. She strives to make sure questions are answered within 24 hours. “The questions people ask are really kind of fun.”
According to CEO Bruce Rubin, who came on board in 2010 and manages “the big picture” so Reef can keep her focus on connecting with her consumers, business has been heading in a positive direction.
“Things have been very much on the upswing,” Rubin said.
In an effort to diversify the business and generate a new stream of revenue, USFoodSafety.com launched a school this year, offering certified food safety training programs. Classes are offered in the Marlborough area or at restaurants for food professionals.
There is no real way for Reef and Rubin to keep track of exactly who is stopping by the site or on the receiving end of a tweet, but they have a pretty good idea and they monitor as best they can. They estimate that 60 percent of their followers are moms from across the nation and even across the globe. Another significant chunk — about 20 percent — is composed of food service professionals, news media, universities and the military.
One thing people who rely on USFoodSafety.com should know is that no tidbit of information is going to slip through the cracks. Reef is determined to be the best at educating and protecting consumers from the things that might harm them.
“We don’t claim to be experts, but we will research until we find the right answer,” Reef said. “Consumers don’t know enough about food safety, and I want to be an advocate for them.”
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