Celebrating Excellence: PepsiCo Receives FMI’s 2024 Food Safety Innovation Award

By Ashley Eisenbeiser, Senior Director, Food and Product Safety Programs, FMI 

It is widely accepted across the food industry that human behavior greatly impacts food safety. Food safety performance goes beyond establishing strong food safety standards and is largely influenced by culture. Moreover, food safety culture is the shared attitudes, values and beliefs about food safety throughout an organization.  Proactively building a positive food safety culture requires a basis in behavioral science and acknowledges that all employees—executive to front line—have a role to play.  

FMI, in partnership with the  International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI), created the Food Safety Innovation Award as a way to recognize companies that have made an innovative contribution or commitment to food safety, and encourage others in industry, government and academia to search for creative solutions and implement new practices in continuing to keep our food the safest it can be. 

We are proud to recognize PepsiCo as the recipient of this year’s award for their comprehensive approach to food safety. Chosen by an independent review panel, PepsiCo has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to food safety and quality through their innovative, multifaceted approach to building a positive food safety culture across all levels of the organization. 

Driven by a cross-functional team, PepsiCo has accelerated food safety culture across their diverse, global company by deploying a behavioral science-based framework to advance food safety culture.  This framework has helped create sustainable procedures to mitigate the risk of food safety hazards and encouraged a workplace culture grounded in sharing learnings from near miss events. 

The global framework is widely recognized across PepsiCo by its passionate #BeTheHero branding and its adored mascots Elisa and Raymond, two animated superhero characters. Through storytelling and connection to values, these superhero sentiments have been leveraged in PepsiCo’s R&D locations and manufacturing sites around the world and have helped reinforce that all employees, regardless of their location or job title, can step into the role of an everyday hero equipped with the knowledge and tools to ensure food safety. 

PepsiCo is the first product supplier company to receive the award and joins a prestigious list of past award recipients. On behalf of the entire FMI staff and membership, we extend our congratulations to PepsiCo for proudly creating a culture of food safety excellence and earning this year’s Food Safety Innovation Award.