Food Inspections
My hometown city government has a cable channel that broadcasts the city council meetings, public affairs programs on various city departments, city activities, city government news, etc. Every once and a while, while channel surfing, I hit the channel when the food service ratings are on. The establishments whether they be full service restaurants, fast food places, food trailers, or convenience stores are given demerits for regulation infractions in food handling,,,dirty stores, roach infestations, improper food temperatures, etc. Usually at the end, they say if you want to check the ratings of all the places in the county, go to the city web site. Having been in food service management for a number of years, I'm always curious about the ratings. Well, tonight I got very curious and went to the web site to check out the ratings. And I was shocked! Some of the most popular places had high demerit numbers! Places I thought would be spotless. I first got into food service management at a Dairy Queen and luckily my owner was a stickler for cleanliness. Because of him the only time I got more than one or two demerits was when they made new rules. When I went to Dallas to manage a diner, the first thing I had to do was clean the place up. I became known in the company for having clean operations and became a troubleshooter, moving from one operation to another to clean them up and bring labor and food costs in line. I had been at my last assignment for the company only a week when the health inspector showed up. I was appalled at the operation when I first went in the door and was in the process of changing things. You wouldn't believe what they were doing! They were cutting biscuits with a tin can and storing leftovers in tin cans! The walk-in cooler was filthy. The inspector told me he was going to shut me down. I asked him to give a week to change things since I'd only been in the store a week and in all my experience had never been shut down. I took a list of all the changes that had to be made and new equipment needed(including a few biscuit cutters) to the owner and told him I had a week before another inspection. He didn't want to spend the money for the new stuff, but didn't have any choice. We got all the equipment, fixed the food cooling and heating units, and I steamed cleaned the walk-in myself on a Sunday afternoon. The inspector was very surprised when he came back and we passed with flying colors. There is no reason for a food establishment to have more than one or two demerits. If it does, it means the manager or owner doesn't care. I wrote all this as a warning. Check food inspections. If your city doesn't have a cable channel, check their web site. If they don't have either and you suspect a food establishment isn't clean, ask to see the inspection report. A good rule of thumb, and it sounds crazy, is if the restrooms are dirty, the kitchen will be too. Beware!
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