How We Survey Food Sites Podcast Transcript

Below is the transcript of our recent podcast:  How We Survey Food Sites.  You can listen to this podcast here.

Neil Foley

Welcome to the Abate Pest Management podcast series and we're with Carl Hoult, our technical manager again and today we're going to look at food sites, and in particular, Carl, what I was hoping we could do is look at how you survey them.

Carl Hoult

Morning, Neil.

Neil Foley

So, food sites, we've got a lot of them from various different sizes and we from across the range from those servicing M&S, Tesco, Soil Association, you name it, we've got it. So if a new food site comes on the scene and you're going to be tasked with going to survey them, which you normally do, how does it work? Where do you start?

Carl Hoult

Well, good question. Obviously, as you say, every site is different, but at the end of the day, from a rodent level, looking upwards, often there's the same sorts of things we're looking at there as far as going to be obviously we're going to need a technician on site doing their routines, and we need the cooperation from the potential client.

The first thing is, when we phone up the client, we need to know exactly what their expectations are. Okay, so this may come from a question as far as what’s your specification, because Tescos have their own way of doing something, BRC have their own way of doing. I mean, BRC, they have several sort of versions. They have their food safety, their warehouse distribution, they have one for packaging and that. So you just saying BRC, you have to know exactly what you're turning up on there because some are more strict than others are in certain areas with good reason.

And then obviously all the way down to some of the smaller supermarkets, which will just say, have a good pest management programme in place and then we can help design that with the customer.

I'd like to say at this point, obviously one of the most important things which I made clear to the customer is I'm not a salesperson and that I turn up purely in a technical one. I don't work on commissions. I made that very clear to the company because I like to go there with an honesty as far as I will give you technical advice, take or leave it. Then they can go through and I think it works nicely because you are there then just to give them options and money will always come late later.

Neil Foley

Would you give them the advice there and then? Or is it all just done in a report?

Carl Hoult

So what will happen is, firstly we make an appointment. So say they sit there as an example, say they may be a BRC side, but they look into work with Tesco and we already know the level of resources, the sort of kind of level of reporting that they want so much more advanced reporting. The monitoring is more involved. And nice thing about these high specs is they'll actually have different levels of monitoring for different species as well. And that so you might I won't go into all that now, but you need to know your different specs at the end of the day on that one. So hopefully they'll allow me on site. I like to sort of talk the quality manager and the technical managers.

Neil Foley

So it's the quality managers you would normally deal with…

Carl Hoult

I would say its either facilities or quality and depending on the size of the company,  they can be the same people and things like that. So a bit of a sneaky question I like to ask potential new clients is obviously, as you say, with a big site, they would have had pest control before, why do they want us there all of a sudden…

Neil Foley

Okay, what sort of answers do you get?

Carl Hoult

Well, let's just go through some, shall we. Okay, so quite often it's a case of we've just been asked to send out a tender, so we need a bunch of quotes. Okay, that's a very honest approach. So nothing wrong with their existing pest control company. All they want is, can we do it cheaper and better and the rest of it, everyone's always looking to cut back and everyone wants more for it as well.

Carl Hoult

That's just business. When you then get the customer being a bit sort of negative towards the previous company, you don't take that at face value. So as an example, if they sit there, oh, they’re rubbish, they never did what we wanted, and all the rest of it. I try and get a hold of the reports from the previous company.

That's a bit cheeky because they'll be in a folder. I will have a look at the site plans and see what kind of level they were doing and there may be every single report in there was, I've been asking for housekeeping, the customer not listening to me. So I already know that this may be a difficult customer, communication could be a problem. Okay, obviously it's not set in stone, but it's not always the pest controllers fault, just so I can believe so you kind of get a general gist as far as who you're going to be dealing with there. And it may just be a case of they've been asking unreasonable things, they don't know the law, pest controllers know the law, and they may be saying, we don't want traps here, we want poison everywhere and it may not be appropriate.

And then things like this, they don't understand crru, which is about responsible rodenticide use and things like this. We have a lot of laws, especially on the labels of the products, that dictate what we can do. So once again, it may just be a misunderstanding that's led to them wanting a new pest controller, that's sort of that. And then obviously, we then just move on with the full site survey.

Neil Foley

And do you walk around with them or do you own?

Carl Hoult

Walk round with them. At the end of the day, passing me a site plan or emailing me a site plan is not going to tell me anything because once again, I need to see the nature of the business. I need to see the housekeeping because in an incredibly well proof building or well built building which is very, very clean, it's going to be different from say a feed mill or a farm or something like that and a site plan will never show you that.

So I need to see what the potential effort,  there's no point sitting there saying to them go, yeah, we can do a site this size for eight times a year and where they actually may need twelve times a year visits and things, so we have to have feet on the ground on that one. And then also you can get a general vibe off the person how proactive they're going to be. You may see a lot of proofing problems if they're looking to go, say, BRC or above, they may not have any canopies bird proof and things and that. So you can start sitting there and start having these conversations, seeing how much they know and what their expectations are.

Carl Hoult

Once we're done with the walk around, I'm obviously chameleon with my eyes going in all different directions, looking for potential proofing and housekeeping and all that sort of stuff. So again, it's all about expectations on both sides.

I'll put my report to Abate,  to Jon who does all the quoting. He'll have his system of doing that. Then hopefully once that quote is accepted, we move forward. I will then return, or our field biologist will return with the technicians, then we do the setup and yeah, we go from there. So it's quite a straightforward process.

Neil Foley

Do they take very long? It's a stupid question because it depends how big the site is…

Carl Hoult

Yeah, I've opted for the survey. Absolutely. Once again it's like a good job interview. You're not going to learn much from somebody in 15 minutes. If you suddenly have a rapport with the interviewee and you suddenly sat talking for 2 hours, you know you're going to be working well together. And quite often if you have somebody who's very abrupt and they just simply haven't got sort of pest control as a priority, they just want you to do what needs to be done. It's a process for them, then sometimes that works well because they'll put the onus on us and they'll let us get away with what we need, let's get away with, but they'll take us….

Neil Foley

Leave us to do what we think….

Carl Hoult

What we need to do. They'll give us the respect and the responsibility and hopefully the resources to do what we need to do. But then also you can sit there and have a two hour conversation with someone, have a great relationship and never hear from them again because they've got their budget.

We know the value of the pest industry. The BPCA has done fantastic things in years to really push how professional we are, but this level of reporting and management costs at the end of the day, so we're not going to do it for the same as old Bob down the road. At the end of the day.

Neil Foley

And I guess depending on the standards that they're trying to hit, so nontoxic is becoming increasingly important, isn't it?

Carl Hoult

Yeah, absolutely. It comes from a contamination point of view. There's some fantastic products out there and basically in a nutshell, nontoxic monitoring is where you're doing the same job as what we've always done, but there's nothing inside that product that's going to cause harm. It's still a contaminant on a HACCP point of view as far as hazard control in the food factory, but we've even got things now where we're using digital monitoring, where we have these traps, where if there is a mouse within the building, it'll go in there and we'll actually receive an email then telling us the mouse has been caught. So then we can respond in a time frame agreed with us and the client, and that. So technology, non toxic monitoring, all this stuff is moving forward and it is the future of pest control at the end of the day.

Neil Foley

And is that true for a lot of food sites that they don't want pesticides and anything toxic on the inside of any of their buildings?

Carl Hoult

Absolutely. There's a lot of standards. Some will sit there and say, we do not want toxic baits, as in rodenticides within, say, production or even maybe the warehousing. They'll be very specific on there, depending. We can always use justifications, and also, there's always scope. So as an example, if you're working with Tescos, they'll have their set standards, but depending on the nature of the business, you can sit there and put recommendations through your customers for the technical team and then there may be a little bit of wiggle room.

Neil Foley

So if they had a heavy infestation or something of that nature, it might need something to knock it down?

Carl Hoult

Absolutely. Same with sort of some of the organic sites. There's two types of organic site, but what can happen on one of the organic sites as far as if there was a problem, you can sit there and as long as you can ensure that their product is not going to contaminated, you can then bring rodenticides involved in there. But once again, there's lots of little sort of extra details but it's all about communication.

Neil Foley

Which is what you always said.

Carl Hoult

Absolutely. It has to be at the end of the day because you may know what a standard as a supermarket may allow you to do, but the actual site themselves may sit there and go, yes, maybe BRC will allow toxic on here, but we don't want toxic. Once again, it's getting that correct service specifications and that communication at the beginning and instructing the technicians and the field biologists to all understand how we're going to move forward on that site. And that's fantastic when the clients get involved, because you're customising that to their business, it's even more rewarding because you've actually together sat down and put something down, which is a win.

Neil Foley

And solve the problem.

Carl Hoult

And solve the problem.

Neil Foley

And I know the way that we approach things at Abate is somewhat different than a number in that we're not working on the I know you're not dealing with the quotes, but we're working on just to solve the problem. It doesn't matter how long the technician takes, in particular at the beginning, because long term, from a commercial viewpoint, from our viewpoint, if we can get the site to a good standard, then we don't get the call outs.

Carl Hoult

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if this comes back to sort of previous things that we talked about, like with the Integrated Pest Management, your IPMs and things like this, it's a case of having just somebody turn up every month for an hour or two, doing the white paperwork, checking the boxes. That's not doing anybody any favourites. We've had some sites which have been a factory that's a modern factory that's been built on an older factory, built on an older workhouse, that's been built on an old train station. The guts under the ground, they're an absolute state. We have all built drainage and fingerprints and then as a vaulted extra sort of canopies and warehouses to it, it's been an absolute mess there and without X ray vision or sort of some sort of probing devices that you really got this, we never found the problem. So it came down to great communication. The customer was brilliant and it did take a very experienced technician to get the site in nearly a year under proper control. That was a very far out there example.

And obviously there was absolutely no profit in the job from a commercial point of view….

But we knew that they were willing to put that money in. We stood by what we said we could do. And then since then, it's all been resolved and we've now got a fantastic working relationship. And then occasionally down the effluent areas, they'll argue, they'll see the odd rat, as you would expect, there's all the sort of ditches and things like that, and then we can respond accordingly, so we'll always win. But it's just a case of the expectations.

As far as you once said, you've got to have that conversation at the beginning and say, this may take us so long to get this under control, because everything about the environment, the product that they're producing, the high risk of the site or the level of risk on that site is against us. And they're that which will obviously be very different from a site that has no immediate environment problems, maybe no sort of difficult neighbours. So it's once again being realistic and getting understanding.

Neil Foley

I guess there’s another bit there as well, isn't there, is our own understanding and acceptance that actually we probably won't make any money out on this site for say the first six, nine, even twelve months. That site, I know the one you're talking about. We didn't make any money on that, but we did in the second and third year. So from commercial standpoint we've all got to win. So the client won because the site was then eventually got under control and we win because we don't get any call outs here at all.

Carl Hoult

No, the nice thing was they were BRC they ended up being a Marks and Spencer site so they got that whole recorded history of where we've come from. Yes, and as I said, the previous pest control there is a good company, but they weren't allowing the technicians the resources to do the time.

Neil Foley

So they may have been good technicians.

Carl Hoult

Oh, they're great technicians. And I said this is a frustrating thing. And I said being sort of part of the BPCA committees and things like that, we get to network with lots of other people and there's a lot of good guys there. But when you hear the whole story from outside their communities where people are, it's like we were charged by of the hour. This contract is only worth you being on site for 2 hours a time. You're going to fail because the rats are like well that's nice, but yeah, we're going to make it a little bit more difficult than your 2 hours on a site.

Neil Foley

So it's not about the quality of the technician. They may be very good because I meet a few technicians of the events we go to and they seem really good people. It's just the lack of their resource and time because they're being dictated to. To say you've got an hour and a half, 2 hours, then you got to go.

Carl Hoult

Well, I think it's safe to say, I mean, probably a good 50, 60% just to make up a statistic of our technicians. Our guys have come from bigger companies and they're really well trained, they got a lot of experience, but they were getting frustrated by changeover of managements and things and they were like you have not got the time to do this job.

Neil Foley

You hear that again time and again.

Carl Hoult

Time and again, time again. It's true of any business than that. But obviously I often say when you have a plumber come out of your house who's on an hourly rate you feel fix that radiator and it's fixed. When pest control, you're not chasing that radiator around the house and it's not bumming through the floor and causing you so much problem. Okay, we were dealing with something, a living entity has got a brain, a very smart brain, and they'll keep us on our toes and things very rarely can go to sort of as a large scope for them not to go to plan with pest control.

Neil Foley

There's a lot of moving parts, there's.

Carl Hoult

A lot of moving parts

Neil Foley

Especially in a food site. Some of the bigger sites that we're talking about…

Carl Hoult

In the dark, loft void, then some of the moving parts come at you very, very fast when you scare one in the corner…

Neil Foley

I could well imagine. Well, it's been fascinating, thank you very much, Carl. So I understand a lot more about how we undertake the surveys for food sites and I know that essentially we do these for free, don't we? This is part of our marketing, if you like, in terms of we're offering your services, so if somebody is interested….

Carl Hoult

Absolutely, I mean, it's a many folded  of thing being part of the BPCA. Obviously I like to get out there and promote good pest control. That's one of the most important things, because I said one of the mission statements of that is as far as the professional getting our industry professionals, so we don't want to go out there and be seen as it's just a money driven thing. So, yeah, absolutely. The surveys are free. Sometimes we've gone out there and they wish to stick with their previous pest control. They may not be particularly happy with them, but it comes down to that's, what they've can afford. But at least I've gone along there. My advice is always free, I always tell the customer that, leave my business card. And also from a QA point of view, as an industry as a whole, if they're unhappy with what they think is happening on their side, they can give us a call and go from there as well. So it's definitely not money driven anyway.

Neil Foley

Well, that's smashing, yeah. If anybody wants to get in touch and have a free survey with Carl.

Carl Hoult

Just give us a shout.

Neil Foley

Thanks very much everybody for listening.