Justin Clemons posted the video to Facebook on Monday evening. He said he took his children out for dinner to the Subway located at 2120 East King Street after a golf match.
“So I sit down and start eating and my back is faced to (the employees) and I start hearing all the zapping sounds,” Clemons said. “I couldn’t figure out what it was until my 13 year old said, “I’m pretty sure they are zapping the bugs that are above it.’”
Clemons then turned around and witnessed what his son thought was happening, really was.
“The first reaction was I cannot believe this is actually happening,” he said. “My second one is if I don’t record this I don’t think anyone in their right mind will believe this is happening right now.”
So Clemons turned on his phone and started recording the incident.
“I was pretty much in shock and so were the kids,” Clemons said. ““It was directly over the food itself… Nothing was closed that I could see and he was just immediately taking the racket right over the food and zapping them.”
A Subway spokesman released a cookie-cutter statement Tuesday night:
Food safety is our top priority. All Subway restaurants are individually owned and operated. As soon as the restaurant owner was made aware of the situation, he immediately took action by closing his restaurant and discarding all open products. He has contracted a professional cleaning service to ensure that the restaurant is in top working order.
Subway also commented on the video Clemons posted to Facebook, apologizing for the incident.
“We truly regret you had this experience Justin, and we are looking into this right now,” the company wrote. “Food safety is our top priority, and we are working with the franchisee to address immediately. If you could send us a Private Facebook message with your contact information, we’d like to reach out to you personally, or if you prefer you can link here http://bit.ly/1XrM5lE for our Care Team. Thank you Justin.”
The stuff looks great in the showroom but is a pain to assemble and never quite looks the same.
IKEA is opening a “Do-It-Yourself Restaurant”, in which diners will be the chefs. Anyone attending IKEA’s ‘Dining Club’ will be able to cook a meal for up to 19 pals under the supervision of a head chef.
According to an Ikea statement, “diners will orchestrate an intimate foodie experience in a homely kitchen environment to mimic an actual dinner party, but one where diners can host many more guests than usual.”
No mention of liability.
I don’t want a do-it-yourselfer who only knows about food safety from cooking shows – fail – preparing meals for anyone.
We’re gearing up to host Canadian Thanksgiving for a few dozen people at a park so the kids can run around and the parents can chill. I cook the bird. I’ll transport it safely and I’ll serve it safely. Who knows what other microorganisms the others will bring.
Danielle Bowling of Hospitality Magazine writes that Australia has welcomed a new food delivery service, FoodByUs, where home cooks – not chefs – are the ones preparing meals.
After receiving a $2 million investment, the concept launched in late August and is the brainchild of Ben Lipschitz, Menulog co-founder Gary Munitz and Tim Chandler, ex-Menulog lead developer.
FoodByUs allows consumers to order meals or snacks prepared by home cooks, and either pick it up from their house, or have it delivered for an additional $5.
Lipschitz said consumers need not be concerned about the fact that the meals aren’t prepared in a commercial kitchen.
“Food safety is taken very seriously at FoodByUs. There’s absolutely nothing illegal about selling food that’s made from your home. It’s very clearly regulated by councils and at times, state government. So we make sure that the cooks are compliant and we help them in understanding those processes,” he told Hospitality.
Pinto defense: we meet all government standards. Flashing red light warning.
Depending on the food being prepared, local councils may or may not inspect the cook’s kitchen, Lipschitz said, and FoodByUs – which has recruited 80-odd cooks, including ex-chefs and MasterChef contestants – doesn’t require food to be prepared in its test kitchen before making it available to consumers.
Ex-chefs and MasterChef contestants know shit about food safety in Australia (see any of the post entitled, Australia still has an egg problem).
“There’s no need to watch them prepare it, and in fact the requirement in terms of their premises always falls back on the council, so from our perspective there would be no point having them prepare it in our kitchen.
“The application process simply involves the cook bringing their food into a tasting centre and allowing us to do a quality and taste test. At that point we also take identification so there’s accountability and then they’re able to sell food on the network. The third thing we do is that every single buyer must review their purchase; they actually can’t continue using the service or app until they’ve reviewed their purchase. That means that we’ve got live, up-to-date feedback,” he said.
Maybe they have those groovy bacteria-sensing goggles.
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Emma Eversham of Big Hospitality writes that 66 per cent of respondents to a survey carried out on behalf of Checkit for its report The Financial Impact of Getting Food Safety Wrong cited bad food hygiene as a reason for not returning to a restaurant compared to 16 per cent of diners who said slow or bad service would put them off.
Of the 1,101 people surveyed, 75 per cent would never visit a food outlet implicated in a food poisoning or hygiene incident unless it had changed hands, highlighting the need for effective food safety management in restaurants looking to stay in business.
The type of venue made no difference, either, the research found with sandwich shops, pubs and fine-dining restaurants equally as likely to put-off customers if their food hygiene rating was two or below.
Checkit said: “Could your restaurant survive losing 75 per cent of its customers? At a time when information on issues can be easily shared on social media, reported to environmental health officers or through review sites, this demonstrates the real risk of poor hygiene to business survival.”
Daniel Rupert Sridharan is standing trial in the District Court accused of telling the company that unless he was paid $12.7 million he would release footage to showing cockroaches, “a rat in a tub” and “a sharp utensil found (in product)”.
In her opening address to the jury Crown Prosecutor Sarah Farnden said Sridharan wrote a letter to the company — whose name has been suppressed by the court — saying that “(the company) can hide the truth from auditors and customers but can never hide the truth from its own employees.”
“He claims the footage will be sent to (various lobby groups),” Ms Farnden told the jury.
Ms Farnden said Sridharan tried to extort the company in a six-page letter he sent to them on March 16 last year.
The letter allegedly demanded the cash payment in return for not leaking video footage to the authorities and major supermarkets including footage of a rat in the manufacturing facility.
“It was sent by registered post, and had the defendants’ name and address clearly marked as the sender on the envelope,” Ms Farnden said.
Health officials said in all five cases, customers developed symptoms including diarrhea and abdominal cramps after eating at the restaurant late last month. Three of those people had to be hospitalized, and one of those patients developed a kidney problem. All five people have since recovered.
Laboratory tests determined all five people had the same strain of E. coli.
The restaurant has been temporarily closed while the health department investigates the cause of the contamination. The restaurant will also be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized.
Lisa Jennings of Nation’s Restaurant News reports that public restaurant companies have room for improvement when it comes to disclosing food-safety risks, and shareholders should consider how companies mitigate that risk before investing.
Duh.
Chapman and I have both had short-traders call us in the past few weeks, all seemingly high on coke and awkward like Christian Bale in The Big Short.
They think they’ve found a new way to make money.
I just sigh, and anyone who’s read barfblog.com over the past 11 years could figure it out.
But I don’t have a New York business card and am awkward in my own way.
But if anyone wants to hire me to oversee their food investments, I’m available. Maybe I’ll just start my own foodsafetyfirst fund.
A new report from Cornerstone Capital Group called “Food Safety: In a State of Transformation,” commissioned by Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute, an independent research group that focuses on corporate governance.
“We definitely think there is room to improve,” said Mike Shavel, global thematic analyst with Cornerstone Capital, and one of the study’s authors. “Restaurants gave the least amount of disclosure throughout the food-supply chain. They really do need to take this more seriously in terms of providing disclosure to their customers, but also their investors.”
The report examined a number of food-safety events across the food industry over the last 25 years that have impacted public companies, from an E. coli outbreak at Jack in the Box in 1993, to a series of illness outbreaks at Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. last year.
The food-safety practices and disclosures of about 60 companies across the food industry were evaluated, including grocery companies, meat and produce suppliers, food manufacturers, and distributors.
Looking at a sample of 14 publicly traded restaurant companies, which were not identified, the report found that the majority provided some detail on supplier management systems and noted food safety as a risk in annual reports.
But few disclosed information about internal safety systems and external food-safety certification practices, or the key performance indices tracked to measure performance.
Only one company tied executive compensation to food safety, and one had a board member with food-safety expertise, the report found.
Having a board member focused on food safety doesn’t diminish the fact that companies can hire experts, said Sebastian Vanderzeil, a Cornerstone Capital research analyst and a report author. But it does add a layer of credibility for restaurants, he said.
About half of the companies disclosed information about the traceability of ingredients, the report noted. And three companies disclosed sick-leave policies for workers.
Although the report avoided mentioning specific companies, a few were highlighted for notable practices.
For example, Starbucks Corp. has implemented a product traceability program that allows the company to track 100 percent of the raw materials in any product within four hours.
The report also cited Darden Restaurants Inc. for product traceability and setting leading supply-chain standards.
These are the sort of policies shareholders should ask about, Shavel said.
“They should say, ‘Starbucks has 100-percent product traceability within four hours. How fast can you do it?’ And let the company answer,” Shavel said. “That really informs you how the company thinks about food safety, and it if makes it to the C-suite level.”
The report also cited Panera Bread, Texas Roadhouse, The Cheesecake Factory and Jack in the Box for implementing Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, or HACCP, systems and food preparation protocols.
Chipotle, McDonald’s and The Cheesecake Factory were listed as disclosing sick-leave policies, although the report noted that the level of detail disclosed about such policies varies by company.
Such policies can be somewhat “fluffy,” Shavel said. Companies may say managers can adjust schedules if workers are not feeling well, for example.
But investors should look for formal policies with specifics on how workers can earn and use paid sick days, which Shavel argued is key in preventing norovirus-type illnesses that can spread when employees work while sick.
When restaurant chains make significant changes to their menu, investors should pay attention to how the company addresses the food-safety implications of such moves, Shavel added.
In addition, the report recommended that shareholders looking at any publicly traded food company consider asking the following questions:
What internal systems are in place to support food-safety objectives? Is third-party certification required?
What systems and certifications are required from suppliers?
What formal food-safety staff training is required?
Which technologies are being used to facilitate traceability throughout the supply chain?
Who is the lead food safety person at the company and to whom do they report? Is there a food-safety committee within the company?
How does the board oversee food safety? Which key performance indicators are reported, and how often are they provided?
I’ll add this: any company that wants my money has to be sending out its own investigators to really see what is going on in food safety. Walk the talk.
Daniel Woolfson of The Morning Advertiser reports that Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) was slapped with a £100,000 fine after environmental health officers uncovered an infestation of mice at one of its Birmingham pubs.
The company, which owns the Harvester and Toby Carvery, pleaded guilty to three food safety offences at Birmingham Crown Court on Friday (19 August) after inspectors discovered rodent droppings and unhygienic kitchen conditions at the Railway, Hill Street.
It was ordered to pay £105,000 as well as £9,528 in costs and a £120 victim surcharge.
Councillor Barbara Dring, Birmingham City Council’s licensing and public protection committee chair, said: “People should be able to have confidence in the safety of the food served and cleanliness of any food business in Birmingham – regardless of whether it’s a pub or a posh restaurant.
“We want the city’s food businesses to thrive and, as such, our officers work closely with premises to ensure they achieve the necessary standards required to operate safely.”
The Railway’s kitchen was ordered to close on the spot after the inspection on February 18 last year but was allowed to reopen two days later when inspectors returned and found improvements to have been made.
Since then it has gone on to achieve a five-star food hygiene rating.
Earlier this summer M&B admitted a breach of duty to 280 customers who were stricken with norovirus after visiting an Exeter Toby Carvery pub in April 2015.
The Exeter Arms was closed after instances of the virus, which causes diarrhea and vomiting, were reported to management.
However, it continued to trade after closing for one day and more people fell ill.
Amandeep Dhillon, partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell, which was instructed by the customers to investigate the outbreak, said at the time it hoped by taking legal action important lessons would be learned when it came to dealing with outbreaks of illness in similar premises.
Katrina Stokes of The Advertiser reports the InterContinental Adelaide buffet breakfast that made at least 71 people sick from salmonella poisoning has been linked to cross-contamination from eggs.
An Adelaide City Council and SA Health joint investigation has identified the likely cause of the salmonella as cross contamination or inadequate cooking of raw eggs.
The total number of people struck down with symptoms including vomiting, diarrhoea, fever and headaches after eating the breakfast spread at the luxury hotel on Sunday, July 31, has risen to 71, including 21 people who were admitted to hospital.
InterContinental Adelaide general manager Colin McCandless said the investigation was “still ongoing”.
“What the Adelaide City Council has released is a likely cause (but) we’re still partnering with them fully to determine what the exact cause was,” he said.
That’s the same McCandless who last week said it was ‘absolutely safe’ to eat at the hotel.
SA Health chief medical officer Professor Paddy Phillips said the latest salmonella outbreak was another reminder of the potential risks associated with handling raw eggs.
The hotel’s $37 full breakfast buffet at the Riverside Restaurant includes scrambled eggs.
“We have people’s lives in our hands,” said Alexis Solomou, the owner of Seven Hills in San Francisco. “You could get people very, very sick very, very quickly.”
Solomou’s restaurant boasts a near perfect health inspection score – 98 out of a 100. He says he has worked hard for it and was upset to learn about a loophole that allows restaurant owners in San Francisco to essentially wipe away their old inspection records and health code scores from the city’s website.
“There’s no reason why anybody should hide their health inspection score or wipe it clean unless there’s something they’re trying to hide,” said Solomou.
Websites such as Yelp take restaurant inspection scores from the city’s public database and post them online to give customers easy access to the information. But those scores can’t get posted if the city erases the information from its online database.
In May, the Investigative Unit discovered that the San Francisco Department of Public Health deletes old health inspection records from its website if a restaurant files a change of ownership with the city. The application process costs restaurants roughly $600 in city fees but offers new owners a clean slate so they are not saddled with the old health inspection scores from the previous restaurant owner.
However, the Investigative Unit revealed that even after a restaurant files an ownership change with the city, the same people can continue to run the restaurant as long as the owners list a new corporation name as part of that application.
Even in situations when new restaurant owners are listed in the application, the Investigative Unit discovered those owners are still allowed to work for the same corporation that owned the restaurant previously. So while a restaurant may have strong ties to its previous ownership, San Francisco still agrees to delete that restaurant’s old inspection records from the city’s online database.
That’s exactly what happened at a dim sum restaurant in the Diamond Heights neighborhood. All Season Restaurant, which is officially known as Harbor Villa on city documents, had its history of repeated high-risk violations wiped clean online, even though inspectors found dead cockroaches on utensils and plates.
“It’s not for me to make sense of it; it is what the law requires us to do,” said Stephanie Cushing, director of San Francisco’s Department of Environmental Health.
Cushing and her team of 30 inspectors are in charge of permitting the roughly 7,400 restaurants and caterers throughout San Francisco. In May, Cushing told the Investigative Unit that state and local laws require her department to remove a restaurant’s old inspection records from the city’s website once they file a change of ownership application.
State Law on Restaurant Inspections
That’s simply not true, according to the California Department of Public Health. Nowhere in California’s retail food code does it state a local health department must delete a restaurant’s old health records from its website.
“The law doesn’t specify whether a historical record associated with a prior owner of a business goes with a new company or doesn’t go with a new company,” said Pat Kennelly, California’s Department of Public Health Food Safety Manager. “The law is silent on the issue.”
Kennelly said there is nothing to keep local health departments from shutting down a restaurant for repeated health violations.
“They have the authority under existing law to be able to take action against them, to fine them, penalize them, impound their equipment, impound product, and ultimately suspend or revoke their permits if they can’t comply with the rules,” Kennelly said.
San Francisco’s Department of Public Health stopped including a restaurant’s previous ownership records online about 10 years ago. A spokeswoman for the department said consumers “only wanted to see the most current score.” She went on to say that posting the information now “would make it very difficult for people to navigate.”
That response frustrates Solomou.
“To say that San Francisco diners, in particular, are not savvy enough to digest that information is incorrect,” Solomou said. “I don’t know why anyone would want the wool being pulled over their eyes.”
Solomou said the issue is also one of fairness since his own restaurant’s inspection history is posted online, even though his violations were deemed “low-risk,” including a peeling wall. He wonders why restaurants with far more serious violations are allowed to wipe their records clean, regardless of how dirty those record may have been over the years.
“To think that someone can come in and change their name … and get any blemishes squashed is scary,” Solomou said. “It really is.”
Drive-through fast food vendor Sonic, known for their creepy television commercials, made the silver screen in a less appetizing way in Corpus Christi, Texas.
According to Jessica Hamilton of the Houston Chronicle, when the Cortez family pulled up to a Sonic Drive-In window on Saturday, they expected to be handed the four drinks they ordered. Instead, they arrived at the window to find their drinks were already being eyed by a furry friend.
In a viral video posted to Facebook, the family can be heard screaming as 14-year-old Christian Cortez records a mouse walking on the fountain drink machine at the Ayers Street location. An employee with a long stick attempts to move the mouse off the machine.
“I was really shocked to see it, especially since it was right next to our drinks,” Cortez said. “Once it went around the fountain machine an employee was still trying to give us our drinks. We told them we wanted a refund.”
The family got their money back.
A spokesperson for Sonic issued a statement Tuesday morning, stating the franchisee at the location has increased pest control measures, including two visits over the weekend.
“The drive-in is currently in good standing with the Health Department and the franchisee takes food safety very seriously. All food safety issues are acted upon immediately,” said Jason Cook, manager of communications for Sonic-In. “They appreciate the trust and confidence customers place in Sonic every day to serve them delicious and safe food. They take pride in being a good community partner and are proud of the service their employees provide to customers every day in Corpus Christi.”
Justin Clemons posted the video to Facebook on Monday evening. He said he took his children out for dinner to the Subway located at 2120 East King Street after a golf match.
