Operational Differences That Influence Inspection Scores of Corporate-Owned Versus Privately Owned Restaurants
Shana Davis
Senior Environmental Health Specialist
Lexington-Fayette County Health Department
International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI)
2011 Fellow in Applied Science, Law, and Policy: Fellowship in Food Protection
Abstract
The objective of this study was to compare the differences of corporate-owned restaurants to those of privately owned restaurants, to determine if there is a difference between inspection scores at these establishments in Lexington, Kentucky. The 400 restaurants used for this study were randomly selected from a database developed at the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department (LFCHD), Division of Environmental Health and Protection. Restaurants were determined to be “corporate-owned” or “privately owned” through an assessment of their owner information records. The number of follow-up inspections that were required after a routine inspection was recorded for both types of establishments, with corporate-owned restaurants requiring 61 follow-up inspections and privately owned restaurants requiring 59 follow-up inspections. It was also determined that violations #15 and #17 were more frequently marked during routine inspections at both types of establishments. The “Food Equipment and Utensils” category of the inspection was marked most often during routine inspections at both types of establishments. Large facilities had the highest rate of follow-up inspections among privately owned establishments, while medium-sized facilities had the highest failure rate among corporate-owned establishments. These results suggest that the differences between corporate-owned and privately owned establishments may affect how each type of establishment scores on inspections with the LFCHD.
Differences That Influence Inspection Scores of Corporate-Owned Versus Privately Owned Restaurants
Background
In Lexington, Kentucky, there are more than 1,200 food service establishments. These food service establishments include places such as sit-down restaurants, carry-out restaurants, and drive-through, fast-food restaurants. Any facility that serves food to the public is required to have two routine inspections conducted by the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department (LFCHD) every year. Additional inspections are also conducted if the LFCHD receives any complaints about illnesses suspected to have resulted from people eating at a particular establishment. Employees at food service establishments are required to uphold certain standards regarding cleanliness and maintenance of equipment, personal hygiene, and food safety practices. These standards are defined under the Kentucky Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (KRS 217.005 to 217.215, 217.992) and the Kentucky Food Establishment Act and State Retail Food Code (902 KAR 45.005) (Kentucky Department of Public Health, 2011). The LFCHD also enforces the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Board of Health’s Regulation 19, which includes additional local food safety requirements for food service establishments, such as Food Manager Certification requirements. Certified food managers are required to be present at food service facilities during all hours of preparation and service to help guide employees toward proper food safety practices and ensure that all state and local regulations are being followed within the facility.
Corporate-owned facilities are identified with corporate brands, whereas privately owned facilities are owned by individuals who do not identify their facility with a corporate brand. There are many differences between the procedures of corporate-owned restaurants and privately owned restaurants, including available resources and training, different types of monitoring programs, and the size of the facility. These differences may have an effect on how each type of establishment operates.
Corporate-owned restaurants typically have many resources within their company from which they can draw guidance on a daily basis. They have guidelines and procedures outlining every process they follow during production and service at their individual facilities to increase the likelihood that they are operating in a safe and approved way (Gapud, 2010). Guidelines and procedures used at corporate-owned restaurants are often developed through corporate-funded research and testing facilities. Many corporations also conduct internal audits to verify that procedures are being followed in accordance with corporate guidelines and food regulations, or they contract with a third-party company to conduct audits of their facilities (Gapud, 2010; Stier, 2009). Audits can be a useful tool to provide an establishment with insight into how to improve facility and ultimately the quality of the food being produced (Powitz, 2009).
Privately owned restaurants typically do not have these types of guidelines or resources, so they must follow the guidance of supervisory individuals employed at their facilities. This lack of defined guidelines has the potential to create inconsistencies between different shifts and employees. Many small, privately owned restaurants cannot afford to conduct internal audits or contract with a third-party company to conduct them (Nagy-Nero, 2007).
One of the most important aspects of running a safe restaurant is having knowledgeable staff. Ideally, corporate-owned and privately owned restaurants would only employ individuals who have completed training on proper personal hygiene and food-handling procedures (Gapud, 2010; Marriott, 1999; Morgan, 2003; Percy, 2009). The LFCHD requires all food service establishments to have a certified food manager present during all hours of preparation and service, and for all other food handlers to possess a LFCHD-issued Food Handler Card (Lexington-Fayette County Health Department [LFCHD], 2011). For the Food Manager Certification, food service workers can choose to obtain either a local or nationally recognized Food Manager Certification. Food handler and food manager certifications are offered through the LFCHD for $10 and $55, respectively. This price is low enough so that employees, even without corporate funding, can afford to attend training courses. Nationally recognized educational organizations, such as ServSafe and the National Registry of Food Safety Professionals, offer classes that cost between $50 and $125 (ServSafe, 2011; National Registry of Food Safety Professionals, 2011). Higher fees could prevent many employees at privately owned restaurants from attending these courses (Gapud, 2010).
Food service establishments can enact monitoring plans as a way to avoid unsafe food practices (Marriott, 1999; Morgan, 2003). These monitoring plans could include completion of food temperature logs, date-marking of potentially hazardous foods, dish-washing temperature logs, and sanitizer concentration logs. Keeping these types of records can greatly decrease or eliminate the presence of health hazards that could potentially harm people that eat at a particular restaurant.
Monitoring plans are widely used in the food service industry, especially among corporate-owned establishments that require each of their franchises to participate in standardized monitoring and tracking practices. Most privately owned facilities, however, either do not have monitoring and tracking plans in place or they do not use them consistently. The lack of required plans at privately owned facilities could be due to a smaller staff that may not have the time to monitor food frequently or to a lack of educational resources the restaurant has to offer staff. The absence of monitoring plans may potentially lead to the use of unsafe practices in the kitchen.
The size of a restaurant could also be a factor in whether an establishment passes inspection. Within a larger facility, for example, there could be a higher demand for large quantities of food, which means more activity in the kitchen. In addition, a larger facility might have more equipment to keep clean and in good repair. There may not be enough employees at a larger establishment to complete all necessary tasks. The effects of size on an establishment could apply to both corporate-owned and privately owned establishments.
If there are violations deemed to be health hazards by the LFCHD during an inspection, the facility must take the proper corrective actions as soon as possible. There are certain violations that require immediate actions to be taken by the manager or owner of a facility. These violations are called “critical violations” and can include, but are not limited to, the following: holding foods at harmful temperatures, employees not using proper hygienic practices, and not properly sanitizing dishes and utensils. If critical violations cannot be corrected immediately, a follow-up inspection must be conducted after 10 days so that the facility can demonstrate to the inspector that the violations have been sufficiently corrected. If the problems have not been corrected by the time the follow-up inspection is conducted, a conference must be held between health department officials and the manager(s) and/or owner(s) of the facility to discuss corrective actions. Closure of the facility and permit suspension are also possible steps for a health department regulator to pursue (Lexington-Fayette County Health Department [LFCHD], 2011).
Problem Statement
The operational differences that exist between corporate-owned and privately owned food service establishments may impact the inspection scores received from the LFCHD. Determining whether there are differences in the scores of corporate-owned and privately owned restaurants and what areas of the inspection are being most affected can help the LFCHD adjust food service training to better fit the needs of the restaurant community.
Research Questions
1. Do privately owned restaurants require more follow-up inspections than corporate-owned restaurants?
2. Are certain violations more commonly marked than others during routine restaurant inspections?
3. Does the size of a restaurant affect the score it receives during a routine inspection?
Methodology
A secondary data analysis was conducted of data obtained from the LFCHD’s Division of Environmental Health and Protection regarding the most recent restaurant inspection data from 2011. The inspection details for food service establishments are recorded in a LFCHD database. A random sample of 400 establishments was obtained from this database. The classification of the establishment (“corporate-owned” or “privately owned”) was determined by looking at the ownership information for each restaurant. The list was differentiated into 200 corporate-owned restaurants and 200 privately owned restaurants. The information from each restaurant was recorded in a spreadsheet. Whether each establishment required a follow-up inspection after the routine inspection was recorded to determine if corporate-owned or privately-owned restaurants required more follow-up inspections. If a restaurant received a score of 85 or higher without any critical violations on a routine inspection, a follow-up inspection was not needed. If a restaurant received any critical violations, or a score of 84 or lower without any critical violations, a follow-up inspection was required. Next, violations marked during the routine inspection were recorded. This process was used to determine if there were common violations marked among both corporate-owned and privately owned restaurants. Finally, the amount of seating that was registered for each establishment was recorded to see if there was a relationship between inspection scores and the size of the establishment.
Results
Analysis of the inspection data revealed that privately owned restaurants received fewer follow-up inspections than corporate-owned restaurants. Fifty-nine privately owned establishments required follow-up inspections, and 61 corporate-owned establishments required follow-up inspections. A total of 543 violations were marked during routine inspections at privately owned establishments, including 86 critical violations. A total of 452 violations were marked at corporate-owned establishments, including 82 critical violations.
The inspection form used by the LFCHD during inspections consists of 17 categories comprising single or multiple violations (Kentucky Food Service Inspection Form, Appendix A). These 17 categories cover the most important food protection and sanitation principles. Four of the 17 categories contained 783 of the total 995 violations marked during routine inspections at both types of facilities. These four categories were as follows: “Food Protection,” “Personnel,” “Food Equipment & Utensils,” and “Floors, Walls, and Ceilings.” Figure 1 displays the number of violations marked during routine inspections at both types of establishments within these four categories.
The noncritical and critical violations that were most frequently marked during routine inspections can be found in the “Food Equipment and Utensils” category of the inspection form. The most frequently marked noncritical violation at both corporate-owned and privately owned facilities was #15. The requirements for this part of the inspection are as follows: “Equipment and utensils shall be designed and constructed to be durable and to retain their characteristic qualities under normal use conditions (FDA, 2005).” Violation #17 was the most frequently marked critical violation at both corporate-owned and privately owned facilities. This section defines proper sanitization levels and requires that “utensils and food-contact surfaces of equipment shall be sanitized before use after cleaning (FDA, 2005).”
The establishments were divided into three size categories: small (0- 100 seats), medium (101- 200 seats), and large (more than 200 seats). Among all establishments, medium- and large-sized facilities required the most follow-up inspections. Among privately owned establishments, 41.7% of the large facilities required a follow-up inspection, while at corporate-owned establishments, 38.5% of the medium-sized facilities required a follow-up inspection. Figure 2 displays the percentage of corporate-owned establishments (divided up by size) that required a follow-up inspection after their most recent routine inspection. Figure 3 displays the percentage of privately owned establishments (divided up by size) that required a follow-up inspection after their most recent routine inspection.
Conclusions
While there were 59 follow-up inspections conducted at privately owned establishments compared with 61 follow-up inspections at corporate-owned establishments, there were 91 more violations marked at privately owned establishments than at corporate-owned establishments. The difference in the number of violations being marked at each type of establishment could be due to the educational and operational differences between corporate-owned and privately owned facilities. The lack of guidelines and corporate requirements for each worker to follow could be a contributing factor for any inconsistencies that arise at a particular privately owned establishment. Having guidelines for employees to follow can aide with consistency from one shift to another.
The most frequently marked noncritical violation (#15) and critical violation (#17) is a direct result of employees not maintaining proper equipment and utensil standards. Ensuring the proper maintenance, cleanliness, and sanitization of equipment and utensils can help reduce the possibility of cross-contamination and the unnecessary spread of harmful microbes and bacteria. Requiring Food Handler Cards and Food Manager Certifications can help the LFCHD ensure that employees are being provided with the proper food handling and sanitation education.
The four most commonly marked violation categories were “Food Protection,” “Personnel,” “Food Equipment and Utensils,” and “Floors, Walls, and Ceilings.” Of these four categories, the “Personnel” category was the only one in which corporate-owned establishments were marked more often for violations than privately owned establishments. The “Personnel” category focuses mainly on employees within the restaurant demonstrating proper hygiene practices. A lack of proper hygiene practices could be a result of corporate-owned establishments experiencing issues with high employee turnover rates. If employees are inexperienced in the food service industry, they may not have the appropriate food safety and personal hygiene knowledge that is needed to work in a restaurant.
An examination of the number of violations marked at all 400 establishments in this study suggests that the size of an establishment could be a factor in inspection scores during a regular inspection. The lowest failure rate was observed among the small-sized establishments in both categories. These establishments include facilities with less equipment that requires proper cleaning and sanitization and regular maintenance. Larger facilities, while they have more employees, will most likely have more equipment to clean and sanitize, and will produce larger volumes of food.
Recommendations
The recommendation for the LFCHD, which offers food handler and food manager certification courses, is to modify food safety education courses to add more focus on the violations most frequently marked during routine inspections. The LFCHD should put more emphasis on proper food protection, proper personal hygiene, maintenance and cleanliness of equipment and utensils, and overall facility maintenance and cleanliness. Additions to the LFCHD food safety courses can include diagrams outlining the proper storage of food in coolers, freezers, and storage areas and the proper cleaning and sanitizing of food and nonfood contact surfaces. These diagrams can be distributed during LFCHD food safety courses and during routine inspections for employees to reference while in the kitchen.
Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank my mentor, Joe Corby, for his endless support and expertise throughout this entire process. I extend thanks to everyone, including the other Fellows, at the International Food Protection Training Institute for providing me with a worthwhile experience in the 2011-2012 Fellowship in Food Protection. I would like to say a special thanks to Courtney Rheinhart, Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, for her constant encouragement and uplifting words throughout our Fellowship experience. I would also like to thank the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department for allowing me the opportunity to participate in this program. I must thank Dr. David Mannino at the University of Kentucky, College of Public Health, for his guidance throughout this project. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and Ben for their support and patience. Thank you all.
Corresponding Author
Shana Davis, Lexington-Fayette County Health Department (Kentucky)
Email: Shana_Davis76@hotmail.com
References
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