QA & Food Safety Manager will support Freddy’s restaurants by promoting the highest levels of food safety and product quality through partnership with suppliers, restaurant operations, restaurant support teams, as well as third party auditing agencies. 

This Manager position takes an active role in advancing food safety and quality through plant/product audits, partnering with operations/training to share best practices, and communicating effectively with our purchasing support team.        

Manage the food safety & quality system of supplier facilities:      

• Implement and maintain the supplier food safety and quality risk assessment program.
• Conduct qualification assessments for new and existing suppliers to assure suppliers are in good standing with all regulatory requirements and compliant with current certifications. Follow up on post audit actions.
• Proactively identify food safety risks by monitoring 3rd party certification programs; develop mitigation strategies and ensure those are communicated to relevant stakeholders in a timely manner.
• Align with industry and regulatory through active participation in industry associations and regulatory advisory positions.

Manage restaurant third party auditing companies to proactively mitigate risks

• Maintain the restaurant third party food safety audit program.  
• Manage the third-party audit partner relationships to ensure restaurants are audited within the appropriate guidelines according to company plan, including timelines, auditor performance, auditor expectations and auditor calibration.
• Partner with restaurant operations, training and internal teams to proactively mitigate critical food safety risks or failures, ensuring continued timely resolution of all regulatory and health department critical concerns.  
• Proactively analyzes results of various quality assurance audits, health inspections and other key data metrics to identify key trends and/or risk areas and improvement
• opportunities.

Other Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate proactively concerning product related incidents, supplier issues and opportunities to increase quality and food safety.
• Act as a liaison between quality assurance team members and other inter-departmental groups.
• Document all pertinent information (including food safety and systems audits) in a complete and timely fashion ensuring its quality and accuracy. Has the primary responsibility of handling all food safety and quality issues and further developing the Food Safety and Quality Assurance programs, procedures, and best practices. This position will provide technical expertise in areas of new product development, quality management, market trials, complaint resolution, nutritional inquiries, product improvement and specification management. This position will provide oversight to ensure core and new products meet brand quality standards.
• Approves product/procedure changes and conducts or assigns testing to confirm product acceptability.
• Maintains involvement with and represents Freddy’s in key food safety associations to keep abreast of new and emerging trends, topics, regulations and process changes.
• Reviews and revises food safety guidelines for all items and processes
• Works with PR team to oversee (and implement as necessary) QA specific crisis management plan.  

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree and/or equivalent work experience in food science, microbiology, agricultural science, chemistry or related field required.
• Minimum of 2-4 years of relevant food safety and/or quality assurance experience.   
• Relevant experience in public health preferred, such as Certified Food Safety professional (CPFS) or Registered Environmental Health Specialist (REHS)
• Strong working knowledge of food industry product safety and quality assurance principles, HACCP systems, auditing systems, process, sanitation, and crisis management systems.
• Proficient understanding of US food safety regulations (FDA and USDA).
• Ability to conduct research, organize information, solve problems systematically and manage projects effectively.
• Knowledge of Sanitation Standard Operation Procedures (SSOP’s) in the food industry
• Ability to operate basic office equipment such as computers, copiers, printers and proficiency in Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint
• Good problem-solving skills and able to thrive in a very fast paced, demanding environment.

 Physical Requirements

• The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.  While
• performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to:
• Communicate in person, via Teams and over the phone;
• Review and disseminate information from printed sources, digital sources and/or in-person professional associations;
• Stand, walk, use hands to handle or feel, reach with hands and arms, bend, stoop
• Travel by airline and/or automobile away for meetings, conferences, inspections, as necessary; and
• Be available a variety of hours to include evenings, nights and weekends, if necessary.