Quick commerce platforms and dark store operators are scrambling to hire food safety supervisors and technical staff as widening inspection drives by state regulators jack up demand for experienced compliance personnel. And, the demand-supply mismatch has pushed up salary premiums for such professionals by as much as 45-55%.
The hiring scramble follows a series of licence suspensions, improvement notices and store closures in Maharashtra and Karnataka, putting dark store compliance under greater scrutiny and forcing operators to plug staffing gaps at short notice.
“There’s a spike in mandates from quick commerce firms in the last two to three weeks,” said Varun Sachdeva, SVP and APAC head at NLB Services.
According to multiple staffing firms FE spoke to, India needs about 1.3-1.5 million active certified food safety supervisors against an available pool of roughly 1-1.2 million, leaving a shortfall of hundreds of thousands. The shortage has pushed salary premiums for food safety professionals up 45-55% from early-2025 levels, with experienced candidates commanding the highest premiums, industry executives said.
“The supply-demand gap has not materially eased,” said Deepesh Gupta, director and business head, general staffing, at Adecco India. “The market continues to see a shortage of experienced food safety supervisors, quality assurance (QA) professionals, food safety managers, HACCP (hazard analysis critical control point) specialists and technical compliance personnel.”
While the certified pool has grown since the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) began tightening FoSTaC training requirements for e-commerce food operations in July 2025, staffing firms and industry executives said most of that growth has been at the entry level. The shortage is now particularly acute among experienced professionals who can conduct audits, manage cold chains and oversee corrective actions across multiple shifts.
The talent crunch is being compounded by hotels, restaurants and cold storage operators also competing for the same pool of experienced food safety professionals as inspections widen.
At the store level, the pressure is already visible. A dark store operator in Andheri West, Mumbai, who did not wish to be named, said the facility had been shut pre-emptively to complete compliance requirements before inspectors arrived and would reopen once records and staffing were in place. Multiple operators in Bengaluru’s Koramangala and JP Nagar said they had started hiring at short notice, with certified candidates taking longer than usual to find.
Operators are increasingly using contract consultants as a stopgap rather than waiting to fill permanent positions. Industry experts said this could create compliance on paper without necessarily changing day-to-day practices, since consultants brought in for an audit cycle are not responsible for operations between inspections.
“Passing audits and completing paperwork do not always result in proper food-safety practices at the store level,” Sachdeva said. “With the current backdrop of a series of raids on quick-commerce dark stores, the approach may change as companies reassess their food safety and compliance requirements,” Gupta added.
The regulator’s own findings point to gaps in the staffing and oversight of food handlers. In its order suspending Blinkit’s Malad West store’s licence, the Maharashtra FDA listed the absence of medical examination and regular health records of food-handling staff, and a lack of personal hygiene and protective equipment, among the violations.
The pressure is likely to increase during the festive season. Adecco expects demand for food safety talent to rise 15-25%, while NLB Services expects quick commerce companies to increase temporary hiring by 35-40%.
The developments come as enforcement has intensified over the past two weeks. Maharashtra has suspended 14 dark store licences linked to Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart. Karnataka has sealed a Zepto warehouse in Hoskote taluk and flagged lapses at a Zomato Hyperpure facility in Bengaluru.
Under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, licensed food businesses are required to have one certified food safety supervisor, trained under FSSAI’s FoSTaC programme, for every 25 food handlers at each premises. They are also required to maintain medical fitness records and documented hygiene systems. QA professionals, food safety managers and technical personnel oversee the wider compliance framework.
In July 2025, FSSAI told more than 70 e-commerce representatives that dark stores in their networks would be subject to the food safety requirements applicable to other licensed food businesses.
Enforcement has tightened further this year. Amended licensing regulations notified in March and effective from April introduced risk-based inspections and specific provisions for businesses selling food online, with inspection frequency left to state departments rather than a fixed schedule.