Food Safety Culture & Compliance Specialist

The Food Safety Culture & Compliance Specialist is a key leader responsible for embedding, strengthening, and championing food safety culture throughout Embassy Ingredients. This role ensures all food safety, regulatory, and customer requirements are met while driving behavioral engagement through the Food Safety Culture Mentorship Program. The Specialist promotes proactive risk awareness, continuous improvement, and cross-functional accountability, ensuring that food safety is understood, valued, and practiced by every team member.

Core Responsibilities
Food Safety Culture Leadership

Serves as the Food Safety Culture Lead, championing behavioral expectations, positive reinforcement, and coaching.

Facilitates the Food Safety Culture Mentorship Program, supporting mentors and mentees, tracking progress, and providing tools to strengthen leadership behaviors.

Drives plant-wide engagement initiatives: culture themes, posters, trainings, storytelling, and Gemba-style culture walks.

Uses data—near misses, audit results, NC trends, behavioral observations to identify culture gaps and implement targeted improvement actions.

Provides monthly KPI First Pass and Audit Ready data to management.

Promotes a “Say Something, Do Something” culture: encourages reporting, rapid response, and visible accountability.

Facilitates cross-department learning sessions to build cultural ownership (Ops, Sanitation, Warehouse, R&D, Maintenance).

Food Safety Compliance

Ensures compliance to BRCGS, GFCP, Kosher, Halal, SFCR, FDA, and customer standards.

Acts as Facility Lead Internal Auditor, maintaining and executing the internal audit schedule.

Leads root cause investigations using structured RCA methods (cause & effect, 5-Why, barrier analysis). Ensures opportunity investigations are on-track and completed on time.

Manages audit readiness and supports all external inspections.

Coordinates Kosher inspections with the Rabbi.

Oversees verification records, environmental monitoring, and trending analysis.

Conducts annual vulnerability risk assessments for raw materials and packaging.

Orders and monitors metal-detectable tools and equipment.

Drives continuous improvement of food safety and food safety culture programs.

Acts as the Food Safety Team lead – hosts monthly food safety meetings.

Training & Embassy University Leadership

Serves as the Lead Administrator of Embassy University, ensuring the platform is current, organized, user-friendly, and fully aligned with food safety culture priorities and organizational training needs.

Maintains, updates, and publishes all Quality, Food Safety, and Regulatory training materials, ensuring accuracy, version control, and compliance with BRCGS, GFCP, HACCP, Kosher, Halal, SFCR, FDA, and customer requirements.

Develops and delivers clear, engaging, and accessible training across multiple formats (in-person, digital modules, toolbox talks, micro-learnings).

Designs training content that incorporates practical examples, real case studies, and behavior-based culture principles to strengthen food safety culture engagement.

Collaborates with cross-functional teams (Operations, R&D, Warehouse, Sanitation, Maintenance) to ensure training reflects real operational needs and supports consistent execution.

Acts as a role model trainer, promoting a safe, respectful learning environment and simplifying complex concepts for staff at all levels.

Supports and coaches leaders through the Food Safety Culture Mentorship Program, reinforcing leadership behaviors, food safety accountability, and continuous improvement.

Continuously enhances the Embassy University platform by adding refresher modules, culture boosters, updated SOP trainings, and new learning tools to strengthen retention and capability across the…