HEALTH—Restaurants Catch Bellyache Trying to Keep Good Grades

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One night in July, Muhammed Rahman, his wife and family scrubbed their Van Nuys restaurant until 3 o’clock in the morning. When they had finished, Passage to India, the restaurant Rahman has owned for more than 15 years, sparkled.

But the damage was already done.

Authorities had closed Passage to India earlier that day because a health department inspector found mouse droppings in the kitchen. The A rating that usually greets diners came off the door and, though the restaurant was able to reopen after the all-night cleanup, even regulars stopped coming.

“You know the Indian restaurant,” said Rahman. “If there is no ‘A,’ nobody is coming here. In the last three months, I’m losing business.”

Three years after a local television news crew went behind the kitchen doors of L.A. restaurants and showed, in graphic detail, a bellyful of food-handling nightmares, there are more inspectors, more A-rated restaurants and fewer closures than ever.

But the business falloff that can result, even with a drop to a B rating, can be very costly.

“I try to stay with the A’s,” said Frank McKenna, a Warner Center office worker who was lunching at a local strip mall one recent afternoon. “I’ll occasionally do a B if I’ve eaten there before. But I wouldn’t eat below a B.”


Grades hurt business

The grading system has become so powerful that many restaurant owners refuse to talk about their experiences on the record for fear of retaliation by the inspectors on whom, they say, their livelihood rests. Privately they claim that a restaurant’s sales can drop as much as 40 percent, even with a ratings slide from A to B.

“People would walk up, see the B and walk across the street,” said one restaurateur, whose rating dropped after an inspection recently.

L.A. County instituted the report card system in 1998 after an undercover sting caught even the swankiest restaurants operating with disregard for safety and hygiene. The report led to the hiring of 74 additional county environmental health inspectors and supervisors, increasing the frequency of unannounced visits and boosting the visibility of the process. Restaurants were required to post their grades, and closures are disclosed to the public in entranceways, in newspapers and on the Department of Health Services Web site.

Some infractions, like the presence of rodents or cockroaches, lack of hot water or problems with the sewage disposal system, will get a restaurant closed immediately, with the reason posted in no uncertain terms on the door.

Score averages have gone up consistently since the program was instituted, and the percentage of restaurants receiving A ratings has climbed to 79.4 percent from 76.8 percent last year. The percentage of eateries receiving B and C ratings has consistently declined.

“What grading gives us is a proactive incentive for the operator to do better,” said Terrance Powell, chief environmental health specialist for the consultation and technical services unit of the Los Angeles County Environmental Health Department.

That’s little consolation to those who believe they are already well motivated, but wind up on the wrong side of the system.


Business plummets

A straight A operator, Rahman’s Passage to India was one of 185 restaurants shut down countywide between July 1 and Aug. 18. He believes the four-legged intruder entered from a neighboring store, although he concedes that the blame lies with him, not the process.

“This is a problem of me, not the health department,” he says. “I am the enemy of mice and cockroaches, but I didn’t see the droppings. I guess I was busy.”

The two-day closure cost about $1,600 in lost sales. While some customers laughed off the incident, he is certain others have not returned.

The owner of an Italian restaurant in the San Fernando Valley said business fell off 30 percent to 40 percent when his rating went from A to B, costing him about $15,000. “I haven’t been able to take any money out of here since it started,” said the owner, who didn’t want his name used. “I had to take $5,700 from my own pocket.”

Six weeks after the inspection, business is still off about 20 percent, and the restaurant owner has begun an ad campaign that offers 50 percent off on the second meal. The cost: another $1,400.

One problem, say many owners, is that a single cockroach egg delivered with a food shipment from suppliers may yield an army of insects, and regular exterminator visits won’t necessarily protect against violations if the inspector happens to arrive the next day.

“When we found a dead one, we sprayed,” said Joe Lei, the owner of Fresh Donuts in Granada Hills. “They found four more, so they closed us because of that.”

But the Department of Health Services figures what they see is what the diner gets. “Our assumption is how we see you when we walk in unannounced is basically how you operate,” said Powell.

He adds that the follow-up process, and an appeals process, is designed to assure that corrections are made and the restaurant is treated fairly.

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