MS Food Safety CONSULTING

Toolkit

The Retail Supplier Toolkit

Twelve records for manufacturers and producers supplying a supermarket, a food service distributor, or any customer with its own supplier standard. The things a retailer asks for beyond the Food Standards Code — and the things that come up in a retailer or GFSI audit rather than a council inspection.

  • Twelve records, each on its own sheet
  • Food defence and food fraud assessments, scored and owned
  • Traceability with mass balance, not just a list of batches
  • A structured corrective action response to send back to a customer
  • Editable Excel — yours to adapt, no licence conditions
$149plus GST

One payment. No subscription.

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The twelve records

Grouped by what the customer is actually asking about.

Customer specificationsWhat each customer requires beyond the Code, which version, and when it was last reviewed.
Audit and certification trackerEvery audit and certificate, expiry dates, and the findings still open.
Customer complaints and CARsComplaints from the customer, categorised, tracked to closure on their deadline not yours.
Food defence threat assessmentDeliberate contamination — who could, where, and what stops them, scored and owned.
Food defence site controlsAccess, visitors, chemicals, tamper evidence, and the check that confirms each works.
Food fraud vulnerabilityWhich materials could be adulterated or substituted, with economic drivers and chain complexity.
Food fraud controlsWhat you actually do about the vulnerable ones — approval, certificates, mass balance, testing.
Traceability exerciseMass balance reconciliation both directions, timed, with the gaps raised as actions.
Withdrawal and recall logEvery event, who was notified, what came back, and the post-event review date.
Spec conformanceEach batch against the customer's specification, not your internal standard.
Product testing scheduleWhat is tested, why, how often, by which laboratory, and whether it's accredited.
Corrective action to customerThe structured response — containment, root cause, corrective, preventive, verification.

Why these twelve

Retailer audits fail on different things to council inspections.

The spec changed and nobody told you

Retailer requirements sit on top of the Code and move without much notice. A supplier who meets the Code but is working from last year's specification is the one who fails the audit.

Food defence asks a different question

HACCP asks what could go wrong. Food defence asks who would want it to. That changes the answers — contractors, drivers, anyone with access outside production hours.

Fraud follows money, not risk

A substituted ingredient may be perfectly safe and still make your label false. The vulnerability assessment is scored on economic drivers and chain complexity, not on food safety hazard.

Mass balance is the real test

A traceability exercise that lists batches proves nothing. If input doesn't reconcile with output plus waste plus rework, something is untraceable — and that's what the exercise is for.

The CAR response is what they remember

Customers judge you on the corrective action response more than on the original problem. Separate containment from corrective from preventive, and say how you'll know the fix worked.

An expired certificate stops supply

Not a finding — a stop. Re-audit lead times run to months, so the tracker flags expiry well before it becomes a problem.

What this toolkit is not

These are records, not a food safety programme and not a HACCP plan. Nothing here replaces the specification your customer has issued or the certification standard you are audited against — read those, and set your own requirements from them.

Internal audit, CAPA, validation and verification, calibration, training, document control, change control, allergen matrix and supplier approval are general QA records. Those are in the QA Manager Toolkit, so the two complement each other instead of duplicating.

If you need the program itself built around what you actually do, that's the consulting side of what I do.

Questions

What format is it?

A single Excel workbook, twelve sheets plus a cover. It opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. Everything is editable — change the columns, the frequencies, the wording, whatever suits your operation.

Can I use it across more than one site?

Yes. One purchase covers your business, however many sites you run. What it doesn't cover is reselling it or passing it to another business.

Will it pass my retailer audit?

No template can promise that. What these do is make sure the records an auditor asks for exist, are current, and are set out the way they expect. The rest is whether your business actually does what the records say.

How do I pay?

Fill in the form and I'll email a tax invoice with bank details. The toolkit comes back as soon as payment clears — usually the same day.

Do I need the QA Manager Toolkit as well?

They're built to sit together. This one covers the customer relationship; the QA Manager Toolkit covers the internal system — audit, CAPA, validation, calibration, training and document control. Most suppliers want both. Ask and I'll do the pair for $249.

What if it isn't what I expected?

Tell me within fourteen days and I'll refund it. I'd rather that than have you feel stung by a $149 spreadsheet.