Reports stir up restaurant controversy

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
Reports stir up restaurant controversy
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — On July 24, the Independent began a practice that is making local restaurant owners see red.

“I can’t understand why the Independent is doing this,” said Archie Baca Sr., owner of Don Diego’s Restaurant, pointing out that he and other restaurant owners have supported the Independent by placing ads and selling the paper.

What Baca and other restaurant owners in town are upset about is a decision by editors of the paper to publish the names of restaurants which are cited for violations by health inspectors from the New Mexico Environment Department.

Ralph Richards, owner of Earl’s Restaurant, is also upset about the new column, saying that it is going to have an adverse affect on area restaurants.

“I know that some restaurants have already lost business,” he said.

Neither Earl’s nor Don Diego’s has been listed in the restaurant column yet, but Baca said he knows his restaurant will be having an inspection soon. “I cringe when I think about my restaurant being in the Independent.”

Both restaurants have had excellent health ratings in the past by the state. Neither have been given major citations, had their ratings downgraded or forced to close. But both owners said they know that it is almost impossible to get through a state health inspection without having the inspector find something he is unhappy about.

Barry Heifner, the paper’s managing editor, said he thought there would be some who would be upset by the new column, but so far there’s been only one complaint.

The owner of the Teriyaki House, which was named in the first listing, was upset about the headline used for the story, which said that the restaurants named in that column had failed the inspection. The restaurant’s owners have threatened to sue the Independent to stop the release of public records. In fact, the restaurants, although cited for various violations, had all received approved status. The paper printed a clarification about that two days later and made sure that future columns didn’t make the same mistake.

For Heifner and the paper’s publisher, Robert Zollinger, printing the restaurant column is a no-brainer.

“People have the fundamental right to know,” said Zollinger, who has fought for the past two decades to make sure that government agencies release public documents when they receive a request from the public or the press. Despite objections from government officials as well as some private citizens, the Independent has been one of the few papers in the country to print lists of people who are past due in paying their utility bills or property taxes, local government and school employee salaries and local arrest warrants.

Zollinger said people have a right to know just how safe the restaurants they go to are and whether the restaurant staff has been complying with state health laws. Heifner agreed, saying that since the recent salmonella scare, there is a greater need than ever to make sure that this type of information is made available to the public.

People want to know, said Heifner, that the restaurants they frequent are safe to eat at and one of the ways they can know this is by having access to information like the inspection column that the paper is now publishing on a regular basis.

“We are not out to hurt anyone,” Zollinger said.

Heifner pointed out that that the Independent is now asking the state to give the paper the names of those who passed the inspection, so they could print that as well.

Most people apparently don’t understand what the fuss is all about. When several customers who were eating during the lunch hour at Earl’s on Thursday were asked about the subject, all said they thought the newspaper was doing the right thing by publishing the information. “What are the restaurants afraid of?” said one customer.

What they are afraid of, said both Richards and Baca, is that people will look at only the fact that the restaurants have been cited for violations and not look at what the violations are for. Both said they have no problem with the paper printing the names of those who failed the inspection and were downgraded for major violations such as improper food handling or major problems with the environment.

But most of the violations that health inspectors find, said Richards, are nit-picking and have nothing to do with whether the restaurant is preparing the food properly or whether people should be concerned about eating there.

He told of a health inspector years ago citing the restaurant for improper drainage. It turned out that state health codes require that pipes used for drainage be an inch above the floor. The pipe in question at one time was in compliance but because the building had settled, the pipe was now a little less than an inch above the floor. Richards was cited.

Baca, who is so upset at the Independent that he decided to no longer have the paper there for his customers, said these kinds of things happened to him as well.

“When an inspector comes, he has to write a report so he has to find something,” he said, telling about a time many years ago when he owned Jerry’s Restaurant. An inspector came by, looked the place over and found no violations. But as he was leaving, he saw a milk machine some 20 feet away and claimed that the hose was not the right length so he wrote that up in his report.

Another problem that restaurant owners face, said Richards, is that health inspectors come and go, none of them lasting more than a couple of years, and they all have different things they look at. So restaurant owners make an attempt to figure out the likes and dislikes of each one only to see that person leave and the next one having a total different set of priorities.

The rules change frequently, they said, so what is permissible one day may not be the next. And that may not be permissible six months later.

Restaurant owners also have realized another simple fact: You live and die by your employees. If your employees are careless on the day the inspector comes, you get cited. Because of the high turnover in the restaurant business, it’s almost certain that the day your restaurant is inspected, you’ll have service people or kitchen help still being trained and if it’s during the rush hour, they’re going to make a mistake and the inspector is probably going to catch it.

“We’re all human, We all make mistakes,” Richards said.
Baca and Richards argue that it serves no purpose to put these kinds of things in the paper since it has no bearing on whether the restaurant is safe to eat at. In most cases, by the time the information is printed in the Independent, it has been corrected. All printing the column does is lose the restaurant business at a time when making a profit is getting harder to do.

Almost all of the restaurants locally have been affected by the rising gasoline prices, seeing their customer base go down as people in the county cut down on the number of trips they make to town. Higher gasoline prices have also resulted in some companies putting surcharges on their deliveries. The decision to raise the minimum wage has also hurt the bottom line of some restaurants.

The future doesn’t look bright either, as restaurant owners ponder the effect of the new Navajo casino will have on people’s eating habits — will they go to sit-down restaurants or cut back so they would have more money to gamble. Also of some concern is the effect of the recent passage of the Sunday by-the-drink liquor sales — will this result in big chain restaurants like Red Lobster coming into town, thereby reducing the customer base for local restaurants even more?

“People think it is easy to own a restaurant, but I have to make sure that my 25 employees get paid before I can take a little bit for myself,” Baca said.

What Richards would like to see is for the state to support local businesses.

“The inspectors should come in and help us improve our service instead of finding things they can nitpick us about,” he said.

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