Private Health ‘Auditors’ Are Serving Diners, Restaurants

Half an hour before the lunch rush, the health inspector has made a surprise visit to the Daily Grill in Studio City. Flashlight and thermometer in hand, he tests the temperature of the meatloaf gravy, searches for crud under the grill and scouts the cooler for vermin that would jeopardize the bright blue “A” in the eatery’s front window.

But the guy in the white lab coat doesn’t work for the local health department. He’s an independent food safety auditor with Calabasas-based National Everclean Services Inc., part of a new breed of sanitation expert helping restaurants make the grade with municipal health inspectors and the dining public.

Following a year of intense media scrutiny, a health department crackdown and new laws requiring Los Angeles County restaurants to post their health inspection grades publicly, food safety consultants such as National Everclean are capitalizing on fresh interest in their services among restaurants that don’t want to gamble with their sanitation scores.

“We wanted another set of eyes looking at the place to make sure we’re doing a good job,” said Tom Saiza, vice president of operations for Grill Concepts Inc., parent company of the Daily Grill chain. “What would happen to business if we scored less than an ‘A’? That’s not something I want to find out.”

Such trepidation is understandable in the wake of a television expose in late 1997 that dished the dirt on L.A.’s dining scene and turned up the heat on restaurateurs. KCBS-TV’s undercover footage of grungy kitchens, spoiling food and sloppy cooks sparked a public outcry that forced the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services to toughen local enforcement. A slew of restaurants were shut down temporarily for health code violations, including well-known dining spots such as Mayor Richard Riordan’s own Original Pantry downtown.

Poor Scores Can Lead to Closure

Inspectors also instituted a public report card system requiring Los Angeles County food service establishments to post their sanitation scores in full view of customers. The top-rated “A” requires a score of 90% to 100% on the inspection. Scores of 80% to 89% rate a “B,” while 70% to 79% earns a “C.” Anything lower than 70% doesn’t merit a letter grade at all, just a numeric score. Establishments that fall below 60% more than twice within a year are subject to closure.

The restaurant industry has complained bitterly about this grading system, arguing that a simple letter grade does not tell the whole story. But it has proven so popular with diners that some restaurants now use their “A” ratings as a marketing tool.

That kind of focus on sanitation has upped the ante for restaurants to snag top scores, opening the door for National Everclean and a handful of other fast-growing firms.

“I was at the right place at the right time,” said Jack McShane, who founded National Everclean early last year and expects 1999 revenue to top $400,000. In addition to the Daily Grill, current clients include such familiar names as Maple Drive and Crustacean in Beverly Hills.

“The Channel 2 story was a real wake-up call for the local restaurant industry,” he said.

A former executive vice president at Koo Koo Roo Enterprises Inc., McShane says all restaurant chains have procedures for keeping things clean, but few have gotten it down to the science that is employed in slaughterhouses and food-processing plants. Federal regulations require those entities to use a rigorous approach known as Health Access Critical Control Point (HACCP) analysis to identify potential hazards and cut the risk of food-borne illness as part of a proactive, methodical regimen.

Making Hygiene a Regular Thing

National Everclean and other players are essentially bringing HACCP standards into the retail end of food service by getting restaurants to embrace tough sanitation measures and make them second nature for employees. The idea is to make food hygiene as systematic, detailed and measurable as food preparation. Cooks who wouldn’t dream of sending out a plate of fish without a lemon wedge should be just as meticulous about washing their hands and sterilizing the knife that has sliced raw chicken.

“It’s basically common sense,” McShane said. “But talking about it is a lot different from doing it day after day after day.”

That means identifying “critical control points” where food is most likely to be mishandled, developing safety routines to minimize those risks, then drilling employees to adopt those habits like a mantra, from the loading dock to the customer’s plate.

At the Daily Grill, for example, every cook carries a thermometer to check that raw food is cold enough to prevent spoilage and that cooked items such as meat are seared sufficiently to kill pathogens such as the E. coli bacteria.

Food safety consultants such as Charlotte, N.C.-based Steritech Group Inc. also use high-tech devices to measure microbial counts on restaurant surfaces that might otherwise look clean.

“Purely visual inspection isn’t sufficient anymore,” said Mark Jarvis, head of the Pacific Division for Steritech, whose California restaurant business jumped 400% last year. “The pathogens we’re dealing with are getting more virulent.”

Indeed, while national players such as Steritech credit Los Angeles County’s new restaurant-inspection system for boosting business here, overall sales are being fueled by concerns that go beyond a lousy health department grade.

Deadly Incidents Heighten Awareness

Highly publicized incidents of food-borne illnesses, including a deadly 1998 listeria outbreak that killed 21 people who ate hot dogs and lunch meat from a Michigan meat plant, or the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box E. coli episode that claimed four children’s lives, have resulted in costly lawsuits and damaging publicity for food retailers. To protect themselves and their customers, many are hiring food safety auditors to double-check their facilities and those of their suppliers, according to Steven Grover of the National Restaurant Assn.

“A lot of companies are now turning to a third party to do what we used to rely on regulatory agencies to do,” Grover said. “The government is going to be there after the fact. Our members need someone on their team before an outbreak.”

The backbone of that process is surprise inspections patterned after the government’s own checklist.

National Everclean’s field employees, like most private-sector inspectors, possess degrees in environmental science, and include former health department veterans. The company spot-checks clients’ restaurants eight times a year. That’s twice the number of annual inspections performed by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. The company inspectors deduct points for infractions, just like their municipal counterparts, then use that information to track a restaurant’s progress in keeping things spick and span.

While the process can be nerve-racking for restaurant managers, some of whose bonuses are linked to the scores, it’s good practice for the real thing, according to Richard Daniels, founder of Audits International, a Highland Park, Ill.-based food safety consultant that inspects a number of chains with California operations, including Taco Bell.

“It’s one thing to get an ‘A.’ Keeping it is another story,” Daniels said. “The key is to develop a system that allows consistency to occur.”

Trend Is Spreading Through Industry

Companies such as Audits International, Steritech and American Everclean charge anywhere from $1,000 to $2,500 a year per location for their services, depending on the size of the facility and the range of services clients want.

The companies acknowledge that the lion’s share of their business comes from large chains and upscale independent restaurants. But they say the trend is moving toward smaller chains and single-unit eateries as well.

National Everclean is even holding out an enticement. The company guarantees that any restaurant client that uses its system will get an “A” rating from the local health department or the company will refund the money.

It’s a refund that Leonard Schwartz, executive chef and managing partner of the upscale Maple Drive restaurant, hopes he never has to use.

“A fine-dining restaurant can’t afford to operate with anything less than an ‘A,’ ” Schwartz said. “We’re going out of our way to be proactive. . . . It’s absolutely essential to my business.”