Hammered Lamb takes hit after inspection error

Mistake by Florida DBPR haunting Ivanhoe restaurant

A popular Orlando restaurant and catering company recently had to deal with the fallout of being mislabeled in the health inspection reports performed by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

The Orlando Sentinel publishes the results of the weekly inspections noting emergency shutdown orders from among venues in Central Florida on Monday each week after the new inspections from the previous week are available on the state’s website.

On March 25, the state uploaded data that assigned those inspections to The Hammered Lamb in Ivanhoe Village, but that was in error, and corrected by March 26 on both the state website data, and in the Orlando Sentinel article.

Three reports uploaded from inspections performed March 20-21 should have been assigned to Ethos Vegan Kitchen at 601-B S. New York Ave. in Winter Park, which was previously located where The Hammered Lamb now resides at 1235 N. Orange Ave., but more than 11 years ago.

Jason Lambert, the owner of The Hammered Lamb and Little Lamb Catering and Events contacted the Sentinel after the newspaper published his business as the source of the three reports. The Hammered Lamb, though, was neither inspected that week, nor shut down.

Lambert noted two catering clients had canceled contracts and the establishment also suffered bad word of mouth in social media posts in the wake of the article.

“We are actively responding to every comment we get, but many people who read that article won’t respond and just won’t come back to our establishment,” Lambert said.

The Sentinel corrected the article with an editor’s note at the top noting the error, and then reached out to DBPR to see how errors are handled.

“The Florida Department of Professional and Business Regulation (DBPR) takes the accuracy of our information very seriously,” reads an email from Kara Lefkowitz, deputy director of communications for the agency. “DBPR updates the public record extracts for the Division of Hotels and Restaurants weekly and proactively reviews inspection reports. As you have already noticed, data correction is performed immediately if any errors exist.”

The Sentinel will be adjusting its policy on publication of the reports to wait at least 24 hours after their release on the state site, giving those mentioned in the articles that much longer to reply to efforts by the Sentinel to reach out for comment, and a window for which the state might correct any errors it finds when uploading data.

Lambert has owned businesses in town for more than 25 years. He said the article just piled on to area construction that was already hurting business.

“The timing was just really bad, too, like we’re already suffering from the construction, and that was just like the stab in the back,” he said.