Auditor Profile: Bret Zaher

At only 36 years old, AIB auditor Bret Zaher already has 21 years of experience in the food industry. When he was 15 years old, he began his first job washing dishes in a restaurant. Bret worked his way through high school and college, and even for a while after, as a busboy, waiter, and cook. His original career goal was to become a restaurant manager, but when he realized there was a three-year wait to get into his college of choice, he decided to change plans.

After graduating from The University of Georgia with a degree in Production Operations Management, Bret took his career in a new direction. He worked for a contract cleaning service for several years. Since his background was in the food industry, he was assigned to various bread and snack food bakeries, as well as potato chip and pie crust plants. Bret quickly realized that his college education would come in very handy at his new job. His degree taught him how to make systems more efficient by identifying core problems and bottlenecks and discovering solutions to reduce them. More efficient systems result in reduced downtime and lower inventories, which creates fewer costs and increased production.

During his employment with the cleaning company, Bret wrote more than 20 Master Cleaning Schedules and 2000 cleaning procedures. This responsibility proved invaluable later in his career when he found himself in charge of hiring and training an entire sanitation crew for a new pie line at a manufacturing facility. For six months, Bret worked alongside manufacturers installing new equipment during the third shift. Every night he learned how to operate and disassemble the new equipment that had been installed. Then, he took on full responsibility of writing cleaning procedures for each piece of equipment. It took several months to get the line started, but the priceless experience is the most memorable of Bret’s career.

For almost six years, Bret has been a member of AIB International’s audit staff. He mainly works in food facilities throughout South Carolina and parts of North Carolina and Tennessee. Bret has specialized experience in sanitation, shipping, and receiving, especially in bakeries. He has conducted in-plant training at several facilities and has helped start new bakeries and shutdown obsolete bakeries. To top it off, Bret also wrote the allergen presentation and exercises used to train AIB auditors.

With so much experience behind his belt, you might think that Bret has learned it all. But, when asked to offer his number one piece of advice, Bret replied, “Don’t ever stop learning. Always continue in your food industry education.” With words like that, it is easy to understand how Bret has made it so far in his career at such a young age.  AIB

Kerry Beach is Publication Coordinator, AIB.