Digital Assist: Mobilize Your Food Safety Culture With These Five High-Impact, High-ROI Activities

In 2018, researchers at Johns Hopkins simulated food-related outbreaks involving norovirus, E. coli and salmonella to calculate the financial impact they would have on various categories of restaurants. The study revealed that a single foodborne illness outbreak at a fast-food restaurant could cost up to $1.9 million, depending on the severity of the outbreak and other factors. For fast-casual formats, meanwhile, the potential financial damage from such an outbreak could reach $2.1 million.But that’s small change compared to the seismic impact a foodborne illness can have on a company and its brand. Such an outbreak could ultimately “equal losses 10 percent to 5,790 percent of their annual marketing spend, and between 0.3 percent and 101 percent of annual revenue,” the Hopkins study estimates. When all is said and done, the cost of a single foodborne illness outbreak can consume a large portion of annual profits, easily surpassing the cost of any infection prevention and control…