Without doing the life story - I'll start here... I was working for a sanitation chemical company as a food safety inspector, doing inspections on supermarkets and big box clubs and I saw an ad for a company near my home in NJ and they were looking for people to do food safety inspections on food manufacturers, DC's and packaging companies - plus the odd related ones such as disposable diapers and gluten test kits. So I called the company and got an interview the next day.
I had already worked with a large hotel company as an international hotel and restaurant inspector, so when asked if I minded traveling 90% or more of my time I said YES - I had gotten so bored with driving a tri-state area including NYC that I longed to get back on the airlines again.
The next day we started training for conducting 3rd party inspections at over 7000 locations each year - I racked up so many miles that I was in two of the big airline FF programs and from upgrades never had to fly coach/economy again - that also meant I lived in airports and hotels all the time.
But, I loved it - until I started getting burned out, doing 5+ inspections every week, a different hotel each night and flying upwards of 20 flights a week got to me after five years.
In my 4th year with the company we heard about this new SQF thing and I was asked to get qualified as an SQF Auditor because the company thought we'd be doing at least a couple of SQF audits here and there. So, I got qualified at high risk and 28 food sector categories and became one of first 5 SQF Auditors in the US and the first one qualified to handle the Ethical Sourcing audit in the world for the company - let me tell you something, being first is great - but the guidelines were terrible at the time and that meant I had no one to reach out to to ask for assistance, so that first Ethical Sourcing audit I did was a nightmare - but got through it and would find later that helped a lot in going forward with others.
It was my 5th and last year with the auditing company that I started looking into SQF Consulting as there was most certainly a need and while I offered to create a separate division in the company that would only do SQF Consulting, they said no and that I'd be better off continuing what I was doing - I had other thoughts, I had gotten tired of telling people what was wrong and not being able to tell them how to go about fixing things. I was in effect being under-utilized and would most weeks come home and tell my wife that how bad I felt about this small business or that small business, how they could do so much better if only someone could help them - like an SQF Consultant.
Thus, with also being qualified for BRC, IFS, FSSC - SQFI let me transfer all 28 food sector categories over to being an SQF Registered Consultant and with my wife saying - Glenn, you want to help people, it's who you are - let's do this... I left the company and the next morning sat down and blasted out about 10,000 emails to every contact I had in the industry.
Glenn Oster Consulting, LLC was born about 12 years ago and while their have been some ups and down with running our own business I absolutely love what I do - I get to tell people the bad and then help them to fix it, create entire SQF programs, even write programs for companies that haven't even poured their foundations yet. And over the past 12 years we've added consulting on so many things - it's downright mind boggling all the things we offer consulting on. Some of which is on our website, otherwise people call us up and if we can't assist we will find someone in our network that can.
The only issue I ever have is that I prefer to talk to owners and presidents of companies that need consulting, since I'm an owner of a business and they are an owner or close to it, it is much easier to converse about pricing, etc than attempting to go through an employee that may not convey the same message - it's what it is.
Overall this SQF thing (as the auditing company called it) has led us into so many different avenues, off-shoot businesses and we've been able to meet so many wonderful people and have been able to help people, especially the small to mid-size family operations - love working with families!
Not a job, it's an adventure.
Now, back to work, we are working on an SQF project today for a gluten free dry blend packing facility - another brand new one that only has a slab foundation.