Pat Ferrier of the Coloradoan writes that restaurants live and die by reputation.

Word of mouth, spread through social circles or social media, can make or break an eatery — especially in a hyper-competitive market like Fort Collins. A negative one-word rating from the county health department can spell disaster.

That’s why the owners of restaurant 415 at 415 Mason St. in Old Town Fort Collins are objecting to the latest in a trio of “inadequate” ratings their eatery has received from the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment.

“We want to be the catalyst for change,” said 415 co-owner Andre Mouton. “The system is severely lacking; it’s broken.”

County health officials periodically examine restaurants and other food-service facilities, looking for factors that can increase the risk of patrons contracting a food-borne illness. Detailed reports on those risk factors are summarized by a risk index that features five ratings: excellent, good, average, marginal and inadequate.

The one-word ratings are published weekly in the Coloradoan. An inadequate rating gives people the impression the restaurant is serving bad food, said Mouton, a veteran restaurateur.

In reality, he said, many of the violations that led to the inadequate rating 415 received in February were administrative in nature, such as not having the proper warning on its menu about consuming raw or undercooked foods, employee drink cups being placed next to clean dishes and a bottle of Windex stored next to clean linens.

According to the complete report from the inspection, 415 received its largest deductions for issues of adequate cooking and potential cross-contamination from equipment, and for hot and cold holding of food. The full inspection is available at noconow.co/415inspect.

Mouton and co-owner Seth Baker admit there are areas in which they can improve, “but our kitchen is one of the cleanest in the city.”

According to the restaurant’s inspection history, 415 has been rated inadequate in each of its last three complete inspections, dating back to October 2013. The restaurant has been docked points for adequate cooking and hot or cold handling in the majority of the eight inspection reports listed on the county website.

Business has unfairly suffered, Baker said. “We strive to be a great place to work,” he said. “We are all local kids and the community is important to us. We are doing everything in our power” to be the best.

Mouton and Baker, however, say they are committed to working to change and improve the county’s 20-year-old inspection rating system.

Each county has a slightly different rating system. Larimer County issues ratings from inadequate to excellent. Weld County gives letter grades from A to F. Industry representatives don’t believe letter grades are fair and prefer more detail be included in reports to the public.

“That could be a double-edged sword,” Devore said. No rating system is perfect but many work pretty well, he said. “The main reason for the rating system is to get some general information out to the public so they can evaluate it.”

Mouton said “it’s not fair to us or other restaurants” to provide a one-word rating, which does not provide a full explanation of violations. “We are not trying to cheat the system. We want to create clarity. We are trying to fix the problem with how things are scored.”

OK, explain those inadequate cooking, hot and cold holding of food and cross-contamination violations.