Food Safety

100% Committed to Quality

Here at Napa Nuts, we strive to deliver the best tasting nuts, dried fruit, seeds, and confections.   If you haven't tried our products yet, we see no reason for you to wait.  What many of you can't taste or see is all of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to make sure you are getting consistently excellent products.

Taste testing

Every time we start working with a supplier we have our entire team meet to do a side-by-side comparison.  We decide as a team which products look the best, taste the best, and have the best "mouth-feel."  We sort though anything that is less than the highest quality so that our customers are only getting our favorites.  Honestly I have never had a better cashew, almond, dried apricot, dried pear, etc. I could go on, but I don't know how much time you have.

Our trail mixes are made by our in house chef

In addition to being our manager here at the shop, Geoff is also a trained chef.  He personally uses his expertise to blend the right products at precise proportions to ensure that our customers get a unique flavor profile with each one. Here at the shop, we get to taste each iteration; to be honest, we all enjoy watching (and tasting) the products go from good to great.  You only get the best of the best.  Try some of our mixes!

In compliance with new laws

A few years ago, the federal government came out with new food safety laws that hold everyone to a higher standard.  We are proud to be in compliance with these laws ahead of schedule.  This means that we have a third party certify our food safety standards, regularly check our warehouse for cleanliness, have food-grade cleanliness standards for anyone touching a food product, and rapid recall protocols if we get word of a recall from one of our suppliers.

Napa Nuts is committed to providing the highest quality products to our customers. For more information about our food safety program, please email bonnie@napanuts.com.

 

Food Safety - Preparing for the Worst Case Scenario

Here at Napa Nuts, food safety is serious business.  There is literally a binder full of all of our procedures.  We will not be posting the whole binder (who wants to read it?), but do require all new employees read it cover to cover.

Today's safety highlight will be about one of our safety drills; the mock-recall.  Product recalls here are incredibly rare as we take many steps to make sure everything is bought from trusted sources, stored properly, and handled in a food-service-clean environment.  But once in a blue moon, things may happen that are out of our control and we have to recall a product from our customers.  A recall is basically our worst nightmare. 

Today was only a drill, but we got the whole team together to practice a recall just in case the real thing were to happen.  Every team member has responsibilities, from informing the FDA, to pulling product out of inventory, making sure that there are no pending deliveries, contacting our affected customers, and then disposal.

Today was my first time doing the drill.  I was impressed at how quickly everyone knew their parts already and how efficiently we were able to complete the drill.  Napa Nuts is committed to the quality of our products and the safety of our customers (even if my sister decided to do a mock recall on a busy Thursday morning). 

-Schecky Miluso, Client Relations Manager