A career in food safety

I always enjoyed being creative with food. When I was a teenager, my mom worked all day; she always left food in the fridge for me to eat after school, but I always had an idea and changed every dish!

Discovering food safety

During my culinary course at university, I was inspired by my teacher who was a nutritionist and specialist in food safety. I was introduced to the world of foodservice and Sodexo, and I knew this was an area I wanted to work in.

While studying, I catered at events, birthdays, wedding parties and, when I finished college in 2015, I started my career as a waitress in a family restaurant where I also provided food safety consultancy.

Not long afterwards, I began my career with Sodexo. I started working in stock control at a corporate restaurant serving 700 meals a day and, little by little, I got to know Sodexo's food safety and work safety processes.

My passion and knowledge around food safety didn’t go unnoticed and, as a result, Sodexo gave me the opportunity to progress quickly through a range of roles. From stock control to cook, administrative assistant and operating unit manager.  These different roles broadened my knowledge and expertise, and I became more and more involved in food and work safety processes and controls.

Streamlining food safety processes

After 3 ½ years, I applied for a role with a much larger corporate restaurant, managed by Sodexo, serving 2,000 meals a day.

One of the food safety processes we have at Sodexo Brazil is the collection of samples of all prepared food so they can be sent to laboratories for analysis if needed. At a site serving 2,000 meals a day, we had a dedicated role responsible for completing the sample packets and checking the data. It was a critical task, but one that could be carried out more efficiently. I implemented a simple way of completing the sample labels, which increased productivity, reducing the time taken to complete the task by 74%, and improving data accuracy.

Making food safety a priority

Food safety is a daily challenge; our enemies are invisible with food safety, so we have to focus on having the right processes in place to protect everyone. I’m so pleased that I work for a company which provides everything I need to do my job well and supports me in introducing new initiatives, which have a positive impact on our ways of working and, ultimately, the consumer experience.