Throughout the years as a Public Health Inspector, I have been instructing food handler training and certification courses and I’ve noticed two things:

1. Many clients would have to take a day off work, usually without pay.
2. They commuted hours to attend the session.

I was amazed at the demand and need for the course, what astonished me even more… this was the norm! It was common (and expected) for clients to do this in order to get their food handler certificate!

As I begin the course, I provide clients with a quick overview of the day and also provide clients with an opportunity for questions. The only question without fail at this point of the course are all related to when the exam will be taking place (i.e. the conclusion of the course).

• “When will we be done?”
• “When will we start the exam?”
• “Can I do the exam during lunch?”
• “Can we skip breaks/lunch and get through all the material and leave earlier?”

During breaks, I always heard complaints of what some clients had to do to attend the course and about their hectic commute. This all got me thinking of other possibilities to complete the exam while still having the same quality (if not even better) of an in-class session.

This all forced me to provide food handlers with a comprehensive food handling training program that needs no physical presence of an individual to learn food safety. After hours of research and communication with our government partners, in August 2022, Probe It Food Safety transformed the food handler certification platform. We introduced a new service, which was the first ever in North America – secured, proctored online food handler certification exams!

We were the first to innovate and introduce remote proctors 24/7 for taking the food handler exam. The goal was to help professionals handle food safely and provide their customers with safe eating at their facilities. This meant our customers across Canada were able to login and take a food handlers exam – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, anywhere and anytime!

We eliminated the need for physical classes, or pre-scheduling a proctor. We eliminated the need for clients to take unpaid days off of work and eliminated spending hours commuting to a course and exam session. We brought our customers a high quality certification platform with the option of our clients choosing the best environment for them to complete the exam. Now, customers could take food handling courses online without even taking a break from their work or spending hours on the commute.

Probe It Food Safety is proud to be the leader in changing the food safety industry. Many others have followed and adopted our certification platform which makes us proud to be innovators in our field.

Our company is always looking for new innovations that change the way people think of food handler certification. Make sure to follow us on our social media networks to stay current with our latest industry innovations.