Restaurant inspection fines drop under Scott
Downtown Orlando Chinese restaurant Empire Szechuan had six months after a November 2016 inspection to prove employees took food safety classes. But when a state health inspector returned in May, all the employees were new and the only existing employee had falsified documentation to prove training had taken place.
The restaurant’s inaction landed it $2,280 in fines from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
Such fines are a rarity in Florida, as both the number of fines and the average amount for each citation has dropped in recent years. The weaker enforcement has led to lingering violations at some restaurants, including dirty bathrooms or moldy drink dispensers, according to state records.
Florida collected about $1.1 million in fines in 2017 against 2,500 food establishments, down
sharply from $4.7 million against 5,500 businesses in 2010. As the state issues fewer fines, the number of restaurants is growing. Statewide, there are 14,000 more restaurants than a decade ago, according to DBPR numbers.
Food safety professionals and researchers said the smaller fines don’t motivate restaurants to follow hygiene rules or keep up with required certifications. University of Central Florida hospitality professor Kevin Murphy said its part of the low-regulation administration of Gov. Rick Scott, who is in charge of the department that oversees restaurant inspections. Scott took office in 2011 and has been cited for similar drops in regulatory action on environmental issues.
Fines dropped by about 50 percent the first year Scott was in office and have dropped every year since.
A spokeswoman for DBPR said the agency has made some changes, such as inspecting restaurants more if they have a history of problems and less if they have a good record. The number of inspectors is about the same, state reports show.
Florida is one of two states, along with South Carolina, that handle inspections on a state level. Other states give such authority to cities and counties.
Florida inspectors can fine restaurants up to $1,000 for each violation they find during an inspection. The biggest fine last year was $4,800 against a Menchie’s frozen yogurt shop in Miami, which was and still is operating without a state restaurant license.
The average fine in Florida, which includes inspections with multiple violations, is about $400 to $1,200 for each inspection that yielded a citation, Murphy said.
Florida fines are low compared with other states, said Murphy, who has studied restaurant inspections across the country.
“In my experience, the penalties are not enough to motivate restaurants to comply with the rules. Sometimes that’s not even as much as paying someone to make a repair, so the restaurants will just take the risk,” Murphy said.
Maryland, for example, allows fines of $1,000 for a first offense and $2,500 for a second offense, with up to $5,000 in civil penalties, along with possible license suspension or jail time. Chicago gives $500 per critical violation, which includes foods kept at improper temperatures, cross contaminating of foods and evidence of pest infestations.
Places such as New York City have much tougher penalties. Each violation will cost a restaurant $200 to $600 and inspectors place prominent letter grades on doors and windows, said Ed Nestor, a food safety training consultant in Orlando with Star Solutions.
Letter grades posted at restaurants can signal that an eatery has problems, but restaurant lobbying groups and state officials, such as Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, have criticized the practice.
A Steak ’n Shake restaurant on West U.S. Highway 192 in Kissimmee was fined $4,000 in 2017 for health code violations during two inspections that dated back as far as November 2016. During one of the inspections in July, the inspector noted that there was still a mold-like substance on the milk dispenser from an inspection four days earlier and accumulated food residue inside a reach-in cooler, among other violations.
“At callback inspection, the bathroom was very very dirty!!,” the report said.
Steak ’n Shake did not respond to a request for comment and neither did management for Empire Szechuan.
The Steak ’n Shake remained open, and the report was sent to a review board in Tallahassee, which handed down the fine and citation eight months after the initial inspections.
Florida has improved its record regarding foodborne illness outbreaks. There were 282 cases of foodborne illness in 1998 in Florida, the most in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The number of such illnesses hit a low of 41 in 2013, but rose significantly in 2014 to 84 cases. The latest year available was 2016 with 65 confirmed cases.
“If the goal is to prevent foodborne illness, things are a lot better than they were 20 years ago,” said Roy Costa, a food safety consultant in DeLand who worked as a state inspector for 21 years.