Monitoring Food Safety & Conducting ESG with Vendors

As Shin Kong Mitsukoshi just finished its ESG report, its general manager Richard Wu said that it will be online soon. With 151 pages, the report summarized the sustainability efforts that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has done over the past 30 years, which were started from its founder, Wu Tung-Shing.

For example, as for food safety, over the past eight years, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has monitored its products with more stringent standards than regulations require and even developed an app dedicated to managing food safety, emphasizing the importance of food safety to vendors, managers and staff, further allowing them to pay more attention to it and replicating the full set of food safety measures to branch stores.

Richard Wu said that due to Taiwan's cooking oil scandal, 2014 was the first year that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was aware of the importance of food safety. With 500 catering vendors and supermarkets in Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, actions were required to ensure food safety. As such, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi followed SGS standards to collect relevant information, including vendor lists, raw material sources, channel inspection and spot checking. By doing so, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi could receive needed information once there is a food safety issue. What’s more, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi performed random checks especially during Chinese New Year, Dragon Boat Festival and Moon Festival, on condiments provided at food courts to make sure that they are not expired.

In fact, in the beginning, vendors said to Richard Wu that these rules were troublesome because they had to separate cold and cooked food and put lids on all the garbage cans. However, as Shin Kong Mitsukoshi patiently led them with these polices , now the vendors have thought that food safety and hygiene is a must.

Richard Wu pointed out that food safety was originally the responsibility of the operations department. This responsibility was transferred the customer service department so that it can be improved through customer feedback.
For example, a guest purchased a cake on Mother's Day. After returning home, he found that there were some small black spots on the white cake, which made the guest concerned about the cake’s quality. To address the customer’s questions, the customer service department provided SGS test results within 30 minutes of the call and clarified that the small black spots were vanilla seeds. The customer was quite surprised and agreed that providing the test report within a short period of time could ensure food safety and show that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was serious about it.

Richard Wu emphasizes that these services also further strengthen customer loyalty, protect customers and traders, and further influence vendors and stakeholders, and everyone will do ESG together.

Another example is the rollout of delivery skm eats during the pandemic. Even when food was delivered, the food safety continued to be ensured, including the packaging and the food inspection process, especially focusing on freshness and other issues.

With 15 branches and a total of 500 catering vendors all over Taiwan, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was seriously affected by the pandemic. Half of the vendors had cash flow problems since there was an indoor eating ban. To help them, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi allocated NTD 36 million for two consecutive years and provided subsidies for rent, together with its partners to overcome difficulties and achieve the common good.

Commercial Times
by Li Li-Man
Source