As part of the State of Utah’s COVID-19 response, The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) in conjunction with Gov. Gary Herbert’s Office will allow restaurants to repackage and resell raw and prepackaged foods in their inventories to the public for the next 30 days.
UDAF commissioner Logan Wilde said that restaurants in Utah that are able to buy bulk food have been asking if they could resell it to the public. Wilde hopes this measure can help with the supply chain.
“To redirect grocery stores or restaurant food back into the grocery stores take some time because manufacturing is different on this," said Wilde. "I think this will really helped with those supply lines and making sure that we were not, you know, having a ton of food over one area and not enough in grocery stores. Because right now there is not definitely not a like a food shortage”
UDAF went through the rules and came up with parameters for these restaurants to repackage and resell food.
According to Wilde, “one is the separation of raw foods and ready to eat foods. They have to have just like an open restaurant, they have to have these can contamination areas so that they don't self contaminate food between one source and another. Only retail sales, they may not sell food that is for wholesale purposes because that food has not been taxed. If they're going to sell meat or poultry, it has to be weighed at a certain, you know, they have to have a scale and it has to go down to pounds and ounces so that people understand how much they're buying just like you buy at a grocery store.”
Restaurants that participate in repacking and reselling also need to follow the Health Departments guidelines for labeling.
