A hygiene compliance monitoring system provides a dispenser that is associated with a data collection unit that collects dispensing events, such as the dispensement of material from the dispenser, which occurs during time segments of a predetermined duration. The hygiene event monitoring system also includes a portable data acquisition unit that is in wireless communication with the data collection unit of the dispenser. As such, when the data acquisition unit is brought within the range of reception of the data collection unit, the hygiene compliance data and time segment information are transmitted to the data acquisition unit and stored at a portable memory unit, which is removable. As such, the hygiene compliance data stored on the portable memory unit can be readily transferred to any desired computing device for analysis and report generation.