We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Miriam Temple. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Miriam below.

Miriam, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

The idea for this company developed while I was working in Houston, TX in the county health department. I encountered a lot of food truck and restaurant owners that were not educated in food safety. Many owners did not have the time to keep up to date on food regulation changes and in general needed continuing education from food safety professionals. I decided to create a company with a group of food safety professionals in order to provide our customers with an affordable way to help restaurant owners promote food safety in their establishments. At the time, our clients had one company to chose from and they were charging unnecessarily high fees. As a veteran, our motivation was to give low income restauranters and food truck owners an option to receive a quality service at an honest price.

Miriam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a former Army Medic and veteran with a BS in Biology. After the military, I obtained my Masters in Public Health and Nutrition. I have worked in multiple county health departments as an Environmental Health Inspector.

Our team includes current and former Health and Fire Investigators. Our group of safety professionals help customers healthy and happy. The Food Safety Group is a team of knowledgeable and passionate consultants dedicated to removing the stress from Food Safety compliance and regulations. Our highly qualified and experienced staff assist in addressing all matters related to safety, quality and compliance for food establishments.

I am most proud of our team; we specifically seek out veterans that have or want a background in food safety. I am also proud that we can offer our services at a very affordable price, specifically tailored to immigrant communities. Our team provides our services in multiple languages from native speakers. This enables us to have a more compassionate cultural approach to food safety and education.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Our strategy has not changed very much from the beginning. Our strategy for growing our clientele is to provide quality service, great customer care at an affordable price. We depend highly on word of mouth. We felt like if we treated customers with respect and provided a product that was monetarily attainable, then our reputation will grow. We have a social media presence but i would say approx. 95% of our clientele are repeat customers or referrals from existing customers.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

In our field, the best source of new clients are from existing clients. Referrals mean so much to us because it shows us that our work is valued by the customer. Our client referrals are the metric for us to see our impact in the community. As a small business, we cannot compete in the advertising space with the giant corporations, so we focused more on interpersonal relationships.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.foodsafetygroupinc.org
• Instagram: FSGinsp
• Twitter: @FSGinspect