How boutique contract caterer Savore makes food hygiene training impactful and engaging with The Safety Expert

Savore provides quality workplace dining solutions to London businesses and offices. Their mission is to provide the highest quality service, food, and ethics to the London marketplace, while wholeheartedly caring for their people and the planet.

With a team of 25 and growing, Savore needed a food safety training provider that could provide training with a personal feel that their team would warm to.

I caught up with Dan Kelly, Creator and Principal at Savore. Besides talking about the photos of their mouthwatering dishes (that I keep seeing on my LinkedIn news feed), I wanted to find out how The Safety Expert’s video-based Level 2 Food Hygiene training has helped them train their most important ingredient. Their people.

As a chef for 25 years, Dan Kelly recognises the importance of food safety compliance and how effective and engaging food hygiene training is key to his team warming to undertaking training.

The Challenge

Dan had become despondent with current online food hygiene training options. The reason he said is, “Mostly due to the fact that other online training options are not personal at all.”

As he put it, “We’re in the service industry. It’s all about people. When a cartoon character pops up in a course, you just don’t take it seriously. I tend to find that with other online courses, someone can be sitting there, headphones in, but just not taking anything in. So I really wanted the food hygiene training to be as personal as possible, without constantly having to bring someone in every time we get new team members”.

Dan’s other challenge was that he found other online courses to be quite generic and often resulted in his team complaining about taking the courses.

The Solution

Dan was clear why he chose The Safety Expert’s Level 2 Food Safety & Hygiene course for his team.

“When our food safety consultant suggested I take a look at your online Level 2 Food Hygiene & Safety training offer, it was lovely to see that there was a human talking in the videos. I’m a firm believer that we behave differently and react differently when we’re talking face to face, or when we can see a real human being.”

Dan remarked, “It was very concise and specific to our industry. There’s a limited amount of information that someone can take in, and attention span these days is dwindling. So to me, it just doesn’t make sense to give people information that isn’t necessary”.

I asked Dan, “What was the learning process like for your team?”.

He responded, “They’re all very complimentary, if truth be known, I think they’d prefer to do more courses with The Safety Expert. I think we have to remember who we’re training. These people are on their feet for eight hours a day. They’re not sitting in front of a computer all day, every day. So online training needs to be quick and efficient but impactful at the same time. We’re seeing so many people who truly don’t know the important facts and important pieces of information because they’re just flooded with so much fluff”.

Next, I asked Dan, “How straightforward was it to get started with setting your team up on the platform?

He responded, “It was as easy as it could be. I just signed in, then put in the names and the email addresses of the team members that I wanted to take the course, and it’s all automated from there.”

I then asked, “Did you face any issues using the system?”

He responded, “None whatsoever. It was all pretty straightforward. And now, when we bring on new team members, we get them up and running”.

I was keen to learn whether there were any specific outcomes that Savore achieved as a result of training with The Safety Expert.

Dan already has a very experienced team who are regimented in their approach to providing high-quality food, so they are extremely familiar with doing food hygiene training and basics of food safety.

One thing Dan did confirm was, “People don’t always look forward to doing food safety training, so it’s far easier if they enjoy a course. Or at least if you can show them that it can be as enjoyable as possible. Them doing a much less enjoyable course with (other provider) was pivotal to that. The feedback from the team is that they very much prefer doing your Level 2 Food Hygiene course compared to a different compliance course from (other provider) they had to do. The other provider’s course was 4 hours long, boring, and laborious”.

He finished by saying, “If I said to them that they’re doing your training courses, they’d be like, ‘okay, fine’. But if I was to say they’d be doing one from (other provider), they’d be like, ‘Oh for god’s sake’. So that shows they are engaged at the least. I don’t mean this negatively, but if they don’t complain about doing compliance training, then it’s a positive for me. It means you’ve probably done as best job you possibly can when creating the course”.

Finally, I wanted to hear from Dan what features he and his team particularly liked about The Safety Expert’s Level 2 Food Hygiene course.

He replied, “I like the fact that there’s a human in the videos, I believe this is important. And you’ve managed to make it very informative, clear, and concise.”

Savore’s high standards and focus on quality means they achieved the top Food Hygiene Rating (5) from the City of Westminster council.

Dan confirmed, “The team know their stuff. When the officer came he was asking them questions and they got them all right. There certainly weren’t any issues with the team’s knowledge, so it clearly identifies that the training sunk in”.