Web Site Posts a Menu Restaurants Want to Avoid

Doughnut shop owner Ted Mao was glad Orange County supervisors rejected a plan to post letter grades rating the health and safety conditions at county restaurants and other food establishments.

But he wasn’t prepared for last week’s debut of a listing of closed and cited restaurants on the county’s Web site. His shop, the Donut Maker, was one of 16 businesses listed as closed by county health officials last month.

Mao was upset the Web site provided no other information.

Through a co-worker, he said the Oct. 4 plumbing problem at his Westminster shop led to a sewage back-up but was “fixed within an hour and a half.” The 24-hour shop reopened late that evening.

The Web posting, while embarrassing, still is better than a poor letter grade plastered on the front of his shop, Mao said. Looking at a copy of the closure list, he said: “This is better.”

In an effort to help diners make better choices about where they eat, the county last week began posting on the Internet a list of food establishments that violated health codes.

The posting--https://www.oc.ca.gov/hca/public/foodclos.htm--comes two months after the Board of Supervisors rejected a plan to rate restaurants with letter grades, much the way Los Angeles does.

Instead, the board directed the county Health Care Agency to provide more information to the public and to require restaurants to make inspection reports available to customers upon request. Also, the agency will revise reports to make the information easier to read and will set up a 24-hour hotline to take complaints.

The health agency was given 90 days to submit a final report detailing how it will implement the board’s decision. To date, only some of the information is available on the Internet and no hotline number for complaints has yet been posted.

A program update by the agency is expected at the board’s Dec. 21 meeting.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer said the new information “will make Orange County consumers the most informed in the state.” He had pushed for letter grades in May, but after the food industry criticized that system, he backed off later in favor of more public information.

“The full information is not up yet,” Spitzer said, “but consumers will be able to get everything, even the breakdown on the number of complaints at each restaurant.”

In the future, he said, consumers will be able to walk into a restaurant and check a sticker informing them about when the last inspection was and whether the restaurant passed.

“The date on the sticker will give people a perspective on what’s been going on,” Spitzer said. “They’ll know that the last inspection happened either a week ago or four months ago.”

In addition, a certificate of excellence will be issued only to those restaurants that have had a clean inspection report for at least one year.

Out of an estimated 1,600 inspections in October, 16 sandwich shops, markets, pizza parlors and other food facilities were closed for rodent and cockroach infestations, unsanitary conditions or other violations.

No businesses were fined during the month, said Karen Dorame, a Health Care Agency spokeswoman. She said the agency doesn’t know how many times the public checked the Web site last week. The agency is part of a network with a data center at another location handled through a separate department, she explained.

“We would have to make a request to count the number of hits, and getting the information could take five to seven days,” she said.

Postings of closures take about five to seven weeks to appear on the Web site.

Food industry representatives opposed using letter grades for restaurants and food establishments, arguing that grades give only a quick snapshot of a restaurant’s performance.

Of the more than 10,000 restaurants and food establishments in the county, 191 were closed last year by health agency inspectors. In addition, out of 527 complaints received by the agency, 859 people got sick allegedly from food-borne causes.