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Tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode of Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast. Join Francine L. Shaw, the savvy CEO of Savvy Food Safety, and Matthew Regusci, compliance connoisseur and founder of Fostering Compliance, as they serve up the latest in food safety with a side of laughter.
Explore the ins and outs of food systems, responsible food practices, and food safety regulations. Stay informed about food safety awareness and the not-so-occasional food recall. Delve deep into the complexities of the food supply chain with our dynamic duo, who blend expert insights with a pinch of food safety humor. Whether you're knee-deep in the food safety industry or just passionate about what's on your plate, this podcast promises a fresh take on staying safe while eating well.
Expect candid conversations, personal anecdotes, and occasional guest appearances that spice up the discussion. Shaw and Regusci bring their combined decades of experience to the table, making each episode as informative as it is entertaining. From industry trends to must-know food safety news and regulations, they've got your back (and your lunch).
In essence, Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast is not just about imparting information; it's about fostering a culture of food safety. By shedding light on the intricacies of the food supply chain and the latest food safety news, it aims to promote awareness and encourage responsible food practices among consumers and industry professionals alike.
When it comes to food safety, knowledge is power, and a good laugh is the best seasoning. At the heart of every episode is one golden rule: Don't Eat Poop!
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Francine: And if there's an outbreak three days after an inspection was done, and that inspection looks pristine, and there's a lot of filth, that's a problem. And I can sympathize because I've heard so much lately about, well, we're not allowed to close them. I don't understand that. I'm never going to be able to understand that.
And when I hear that legal won't support us, We've got to get beyond this and I'm not saying your job is to educate and your job is to work with the people and if you can keep them open, by all means, this is their livelihood. We need to keep them open. But when there's a place that needs to be closed because it's an eminent danger to the public.
Their asses need to be shut down. Nobody's
intro: gotta eat, and nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food safe at all points. From the supply chain, to the point of sale. Join industry veterans Francine L. Shaw and Matt Ragushi for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't. Eat. Poop.
Don't eat poop.
Matt: Awesome. Good. Okay, so. Francine and I, instead of just jumping into who we are or whatever, we want to talk about the name. Oh, and throughout the presentation quickly, just as a overview of what we're going to be talking about, we're going to talk about the future of food safety in our own crystal ball.
We're going to start talking about what golden calves we think are going to die over the next couple decades and why they're going to die with emerging technology and increase in consumers. It's not like bullet point. We're doing this like we would for our podcast. So you guys get to understand the podcast.
And if you listen to our podcast after a while, you'll learn that I tend to do the introductions and she does the jokes. So
Francine: don't know how that
Matt: happened. So Francine, you want to talk about our name? Cause everybody asks, how did you come up with don't eat poop?
Francine: So we had been talking for a number of years back and forth.
We met on LinkedIn. We didn't know one another. Matt called me one day and said, Hey, let's talk. And we've been talking for 10 years and our conversations just became very organic. And we would talk about the most random things. And I had worked very hard to build a reputation. There was a day, I look around this room now and I see a lot of women in here, which is a good thing, but there was a day when there were no women in this industry and I worked really hard to build
Matt: my reputation.
Beautiful packaged. Perfect organizational professional woman. That's what everybody thought she was.
Francine: I was, and I had worked so hard to build this. I want to say persona, but it's who I was. I had worked for decades to build this reputation, this brand, and it's how I was known. And I met Matt and we had developed this reputation and I have all this going on.
I'm doing well. And we're like, what should we call this podcast? And Matt, we don't have the same friends. That may come as a surprise to some of you.
Matt: At a lot of conferences, they were like, wait, you and Matt are friends?
Francine: And he's like, what about Don't Eat Poop? The horror. Just went through me. I'm like, dear God, I am not going to do any more business.
People are going to drop me like a hot potato. I don't know if I can do this. I'm a risk taker. I've jumped out of planes. So I'm like, okay. Let's do it. And we did. I am just thoroughly shocked that we started this podcast less than two years ago. And we are so grateful and so thankful for the following that we have.
We're in over 80 countries and it has just blown up. So Maybe he saved me. I don't tell him. I
Matt: well, I mean, our differences in our linkedin. So she and I both have a huge linkedin following and we've been working on it for many years and her audience like she puts together really organized post with beautiful emojis and really long detailed description of what's going to go into an article.
And my audience is used to me posting an article and saying WTF dot dot dot. And
Francine: I'm like, my people will not think that's funny.
Matt: But they do! And so we keep joking about the crossover of audiences because mine's got significantly higher educations and hers I want to give credit where credit is due.
About two decades ago, I was at a conference with this guy named Dr. Doug Powell. And he's Canadian, and he was running the food safety department at K State. And he has this blog called Barf Blog, which is great if you guys haven't seen it. He's a very dry, sense of humor guy. And he would talk about all the time, when articles he wrote, don't eat poop.
It was a way of, I think, a shock factor for consumers to realize that when they were getting E. coli, or Salmonella, or all these different types of food borne illnesses and pathogens that they would hear their doctor told them that they had. What they didn't realize is that was fecal coliform. They were eating or drinking poop.
Our episode on just this last Tuesday was about the Olympians that got sick swimming in the sign river. So along with don't eating poop, we highly advise not drinking it either. So, yeah, so we started with don't eat poop. There was a lot of conversation amongst very smart people about not doing that, but we launched in and did it anyways, which was good.
Cause. People can't forget it. How do you forget don't eat poop and you're going through like podcasts? And then all of a sudden you got like these really heady, nice food safety podcasts up there and then you see Don't Eat Poop? Yeah.
Francine: So, yeah, like Matt said, we're going to talk about the golden calves, which ones are at risk and emerging technologies.
And then consumers are driving the industry. Consumers are the ones that are going to change food safety. At this point, we don't have a lot of hope in it coming from the government or industry. Consumers are the ones that are going to force the hand.
Matt: Yeah, and over the last multiple decades that Francine and I have been in the industry as well, you'll see like different points of view, both on our podcast and the presentation today.
My whole entire career has been supply chain. So farming all the way up through to Cisco, Costco, Walmart, et cetera, to the retail side of things or to the restaurant side of things, but not to the consumer side. So the whole entire supply chain. And my background as well is all the certifications and testing for that.
And I currently in the CEO of ellipse analytics, which is the certification body and testing arm for clean label project, which is a consumer facing brand. So, yeah, so I get to see a lot of the supply chain stuff and Francine's worked the opposite end.
Francine: So I have worked in basically every aspect of the retail industry that you can imagine.
I started at 15 as a fry girl, worked my way up to an operating partner, left that. I've worked in training, academia, regulatory. I've been harassed. I've been threatened. I've done what you do. And when I say threatened, I'm talking guns. I sexually harassed. I mean, The whole nine yards. And I've trained over 10, 000 employees in serve safe.
I have trained executives I've trained. I will talk a little bit later about some lawyers that I had in a class at one point. There's not an aspect of the industry that I have not touched. Even this point on the supply chain, I've worked some on the supply chain side. So I've literally worked in every aspect of the food service industry.
It's a pretty broad scope.
Matt: So when we talk about killing golden calves, so the golden calves are about to die. We understand that in food compliance, they die very slowly, right? They bleed to death from a thousand different cuts. So everything we talk about is not going to be like tomorrow, all of a sudden everything is going to happen and we're going to be in a completely new revolutionized industry now, but over the next decade or possibly to what we are going to be discussing are things that are going to be disappearing and the reasons why.
One of the things that we want to talk about is the way assessments are currently done are going to change. The way assessment's done right now, paper, you go into your computer, you type them in, and then the PDF is uploaded for consumers to see if they want to. That all is, first off, if you're doing that in this state, which I know Illinois does at least, that doesn't mean that every state does it even that way.
Trying to get to the assessments that are done or the inspections that are done on restaurants can be very complicated depending upon what state you're in. And so we see that consumers and emerging technologies are going to change the way significantly at which both assessments are performed and also how data is managed.
And the number two thing that we see happening, which is another golden calf, which is going to die over the next decade or two, the people in the FDA in the room are probably like, come on, Matt, this is ridiculous. This will never happen. We really believe that the way federalism is working for states, counties, municipalities for food inspections, that's going to change significantly.
It's too complicated for not just for consumers. They're going to different states and they get sick because different states have different food laws. Which one is still on the 98 one?
Francine: This is South Dakota. It's 95, isn't it? South Dakota is on still the 1995 food code, I believe. I'm pretty sure.
Matt: Yeah.
Back when they created it, they're like, this is good.
Francine: So I really believe there's got to be a time where that's going to change. We all have to be on the same food code. Not only the states, I've done this long enough to know within the state. We've got different counties that are running and operating differently, and that's no different from one state to the next.
I was telling Justin the other night that I was training a class in Northern Virginia years ago, and I had people in that class that were from Northern Virginia, Baltimore, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Now, people in that classroom all were working on different aspects of the food code. How the hell do you train people in that classroom on all these variations of the food code and think they're all going to understand what you're talking about?
Not only that, but I had different pieces of paperwork that I had to have these people sign from the different states. And then within Maryland, I had people from Baltimore city, Baltimore County, Prince George's County, and they were all different. And I'm like, you people, we need to get this together. And it was for a corporation.
They were all from a corporation. And okay, I don't mind doing this for you guys, but let's try to make this just a little more congruent when we're doing it because you understand what I'm dealing with when you're sending them here. This it's. Almost unreasonable to try to do this and have them learn what they need to learn, because I'm saying, okay, well, you over here need to understand this.
You guys need to know this because this doesn't apply to you. And oh, by the way, when you leave this room and go back to your corporation, this is what they want you to know. But you have to pass the test at the end of the day. That's ridiculous. We all need to know and understand the same thing and the government needs to understand that so we all need to try to work together and understand that food safety is food safety guys, but it's safer.
It's not. And that's the bottom line.
Matt: She's also one of the largest resellers of ServeSafe, so it makes her job a lot more complicated when she has to send books to different places, so.
Francine: Well, what frustrates me is trainers are supposed to do a job. They have to know what the rules are. I'm gonna go, I need to stop.
Food safety is food safety. And I'm very passionate about what I do. And the bottom line is, we want our job is to make sure that the food that people are eating is safe. That's what our job is. We don't want anybody to get sick or die from eating food. That's the bottom line. And as a country, that's what we want to do.
Matt: And it would take one line in regulation for, and I, we just see this happening over the next decade for whatever new food safety rule is going to come out. And we were talking about using boar's head as an example because boar head is an interesting one because it crosses over into two lines. It crosses over from my side.
The supplier side to Francine side, the deli side, right? The retailers and the food service outlets that are providing deli are doing anything other than cutting the boar's head meat and putting it on a sandwich, right? You may add some more stuff, but it's not a huge jump. You're not really cooking a lot with this unless you're doing some sort of grilled sandwich or something like that.
There's not a big jump between that. And so right now, there's a lot of questions going on. Amongst consumers, a lot more of beating up the government on why were there, if you guys haven't looked at this, there was 69 infractions and 44 pages of infractions by the F. S. I. S. For this boar's head facility in Virginia in one year, one year.
It's even more than that. When you go back two years and Lordy, we haven't seen more than that. So I'll take another freedom of information act thing to do, but this is all getting out. And so people are asking questions and those questions are in multiple forms. One is wait, there's an inspector. And then like just a inspector in this plant every single day.
Oh, you mean every single shift. And then beyond that, USDA has food safety people, and those food safety people were in this meat plant multiple times, found all these infractions, and at no point in time were they able to shut down this listeria making factory. What can they shut down, right? Well then that then leaps to the, wait, there's thousands and thousands of delis across the nation that are providing Boar's Head meat.
All of that meat is in the same shelf. We see it every single time we go into the grocery store and they're cutting on the same slicer. What are those delis doing? And so we're seeing that leap from consumers right now because that data is available to be grabbed that now that leap is not going to be too far for whatever food regulation is going to come from this.
That next one's going to be, wait, every county municipality and state has a different expectation for food safety for every single restaurant. And then it just takes one line for there to be the all states and municipalities and counties across the United States have to abide by the most recent FDA food code as a minimum.
You want to tack on more stuff? Have at it. But if that one line regulation is done.
Francine: And unfortunately, consumers are blaming the government and that is Boar's head's fault. They're the ones that should be held accountable here. Don't misunderstand me. The government has responsibility in this. However, ultimately.
Blur's head is responsible to the consumers. So anyway, so we'd beat that to death.
Matt: Well, it's a dead calf that we're trying to kill. So
Francine: yeah, so anyway, or a
Matt: live calf we're trying to kill.
Francine: So as far as accountability, I believe in the future, and this goes back to a class that I taught years ago, I had a class of attorneys that I was teaching.
And I remember vividly because I think my mouth dropped to the floor as they said this, we're talking about liability and who's actually liable in these cases when there's a foodborne illness outbreak. And this group of attorneys, there were like five attorneys in the room and it was in Erie, Pennsylvania.
They said, what we do is we file the lawsuit. And think Bill Marler as I'm talking about this. He wasn't in the room. I'm not, that's not what I'm saying. It's not at all what I'm saying. File the lawsuit. We put everybody in this lawsuit that we possibly can down to the clock. We don't care if they have two nickels to rub together.
And we weed it out as we go. We're coming to a time where the corporations are starting to go in front of the JOC. We're starting to see in the future, I believe we're going to see, well, there already have been cases where auditors have been sued. I think we're going to start to see on the retail side, inspectors, they're going to go back and look to see who did the last inspection, what kind of violations were on the inspections.
And I really believe these types of things are in our future because when you go back and look at inspections and the last inspection. was great. And you can look around the facility and see that this place is a mess. And it's been a mess for a long time because there's a difference between and you're all gonna understand this working dirt and filth.
There's a difference. Working dirt is acceptable. Filth is not. And there's definitely a difference between the two. And if there's an outbreak three days after an inspection was done and that inspection looks and there's a lot of filth, that's a problem and I can sympathize because I've heard so much lately about, well, we're not allowed to close them.
I don't understand that. I'm never going to be able to understand that. And when I hear that legal won't support us. We've got to get beyond this. And I'm not saying your job is to educate and your job is to work with the people. And if you can keep them open, by all means, this is their livelihood. We need to keep them open.
But when there's a place that needs to be closed, because it's an eminent danger to the public, their asses need to be shut down. And that's just the way it needs to work. Because if they know that they can't be closed. What's the penalty? And they're a risk to the public. And I think as a society, we need to work beyond that.
So
Matt: And we did a podcast. I can't remember, but what was the, what was it in, in Maine? That county, the
Francine: Yes. I, did you guys know about that? In Maine, the health department, the guy got, they were going to fire him for closing down that restaurant. There
Matt: was this. So give some context. And by the way, this is exactly how we do this in the podcast.
We just start talking and then I end up, hold on, let's get some context here. To get some context here, there was a county inspector in a city in Maine and he shut down a restaurant that was a very popular restaurant amongst some of the city councilmen. And they decided that they were going to fire him.
That got a bunch of backlash. So they decided, well, we're not going to fire him. Just kidding. Just kidding. No, no, no, just his position is no longer available. Okay, and so we did our podcast. There was a bunch of news articles that went on this and a whole bunch of people showed up to city council and fought them on this and they won.
I got a front hand view of what Francine's job's been like over the last multiple decades, and I understand on my side and the supply chain side that the companies pay for the audits and they think that they get to dictate to me what my auditors do. But I ultimately get to certify them and they no longer can sell the Walmart or Costco or whatever if they no longer have that certification.
So my power is not political, but it is very economical, right? And uh, so did I lose big clients? Yes, we've, I've talked multiple times that we've lost, that my partner and I would always make sure that no one client equaled more than 8 percent of our business so we could fire them or they could fire us based upon our decisions.
At no point in time was I ever up in front of city council or senate or anything like that based upon the decisions that my auditors made. I got to see what you guys were up against. That sucks. If you shut down a restaurant that a bunch of people love and go to, that you may be, be beat up of that decision.
But on the flip side, what we're seeing and where we're going to talk about the next part of it is how powerful consumers are getting and how social media has changed the world. People do not want to die when they eat food. They don't care what a bag of Doritos. Or the most granola crunchy thing you could possibly think of, regardless of where you are on the spectrum of food quality, it doesn't matter when they eat the food, they don't want to die.
And whether they're going to a McDonald's or they're going to a place where it's 200 bucks a plate. Regardless, they don't want to die when they get sick. And so it was fascinating when we're going through that. And if you haven't heard that, go look that up. It's in Maine. It was a county inspector. We have a podcast on it, but yeah, it's crazy.
Francine: And I took that personal because I was called in front of city council. And it was not fun. I won, but it was tough. I felt bad for that man. I was hired as an independent contractor to do the inspections. That was his job. So it was, I felt bad for him.
Matt: But what we're seeing right now is emerging technologies are going to change the way business is done.
So how inspections are done are going to change and they're going to change for a couple of reasons. They're going to change because budgets are decreasing. So people just don't want to pay like it's sad, but it's like food safety has come down the wrong so far that now every and it's not just food safety, it's all manufacturing facilities.
It's all even restaurants, right? Are going towards flippy, right? So where people where bodies were organizations are moving towards technology and that's going to happen as well in government. And so where we see this happening is a few ways, but one is that is going to become more transparent and more easier to use.
Because it just has to be people are going to be wanting it and they're gonna be requesting it from the different state departments and requesting it from the different counties. The municipalities we want to be able to rates, for instance, on Yelp. We want their food safety score listed on our Yelp review, right?
Like, how would they get that? Well, right now they would have to go and then they have to go find it and download the document to put it in. That's very time consuming. No, there's a lot of bots out there right now and in technology and programming that is being built that can actually scrape that data as well.
Francine and my former business partner actually worked on a product that would do that, go and scrape food safety data. So that could be done as well. So even if the state departments or the health inspectors, inspection departments don't actually create dynamic data, that data can be scraped and become dynamic because of it.
Other types of technology is we just interviewed yesterday. Patrick Quaid from I was poisoned. com. So as consumers are posting, they went to this restaurant and they got sick. They're going to now want, well, what was the health inspection data? So data is becoming extremely powerful and useful. And the, I don't have the budget for it is no longer going to be the excuse.
Moving forward. And then Francine's got some more stuff on that. But the other thing too, that I've seen on the supply chain side, which probably will happen on the health inspector side is during COVID, there was a lot of look into technology and I was part of a company called rise point. And we did a lot of inspections for eco sure and diversity.
And we were running the software that did all that type of stuff for McDonald's for Starbucks, et cetera, all the inspections that they did internally. We managed that data. These different organizations were looking at. Well, what would happen if we put Google glasses or Microsoft lenses on people? And then we're able to have the managers, the food safety managers of the corporate headquarters, have them walk around, tell them where to go, and then we would provide them food safety information.
We would have them fill out the checklist that we'd have them because they couldn't travel right. The travel budget just disappeared. Well, yeah. That wasn't just COVID. They were testing that out during COVID, but now it's starting to look like in terms of both the supply chain side on our end for audits and also on the health inspector side or the actual retail and food service companies implementing this.
Then they're able to have somebody who doesn't have the expertise for food safety walk around with somebody who does. And where we see this possibly with the health department going is managers now would be able to watch. Five, 10, 20 inspectors in real time with these Google glasses while they're going out to these restaurants, right?
And what's cool if you're doing Microsoft Lenses, I think it's Microsoft Lenses, you can connect Teams with it as well. So now you can not only start chatting with people and asking questions via Teams chat, you can actually talk to them using Teams and you can record it using Teams. This actual health inspection data is still going to be relevant once that crosses over into that world, which we think about the technology we've seen in the last decade.
Can you imagine what will happen in the next decade once that crosses over that threshold? Well, now data is real, it's video, and those splices will come out if there's a big problem that comes out, right? And that will be on social media. And so when that crosses over into that world, We will see food safety change significantly in restaurants and grocery stores because it's going to be real time.
But then also the management can make decisions faster based upon what's happening with that. So that was just a few technologies that we've been looking at.
Francine: So there are some companies out there working on these kiosks and their robotic machines. We've got flippy, we've got the fry station. And I think from a government perspective, we need to think about how are we going to deal with that with the inspections because the inspection forms aren't currently set up for those types.
Of machines is inspectors. You go in and you have to inspect this. And it's like, where are we going to write this? What are we going to do? There's nothing on these forms. And I don't know if you have any of these in your jurisdictions at this point or not, but this stuff's coming. It's here and it's something that the forms don't change quickly.
And when they do, it's very expensive to change them. But there are things that we need to look at. And as a consultant, I've worked with some of these companies. Okay. So when it comes to the food code, these are things that we need to start looking at and we need to start mandating that these technology companies have to look at food safety because they don't all understand or care about food safety.
And we're here, guys. Technology isn't stopping. It's going to continue to go. We're not going to slow it down and they move at a much faster pace than we do. By the time we get there, they're going to be doing something else. And we need to make them care about food safety before they kill somebody. And they're not looking to do that.
That's not what they want to do. They just don't understand food safety. Nobody wants to kill anybody. They just don't understand food safety. And we did a whole podcast
Matt: on those robots.
Francine: It's, I think they're a good thing. I'm a fan. They just need to understand that we need to implement those processes and procedures and the food code and the things that should be in place
Matt: because those robots, there's a lot of different places at which bacteria can hide.
And what companies don't really understand, let technology companies is how bacteria loves to hide. Right. And you know, the nice thing about humans is once you train them, And they do what they are trained time after time. They are constantly washing their hands or cleaning, they're putting gloves on, all that stuff.
So the chance of bacteria getting on, if they're doing everything correctly, should be minute. Not saying 100%, but should be minute. Robots, with a lot of different arms and lenses and arms and lenses and tubes and wires and all of these things all over the place, You can just see, you can look at it if you don't understand biology and go, boy, I bet there's some microfilm on that.
I bet there's some salmonella hiding in that scratch right there. I bet E. coli is loving to be in this spot right here. So how do you do that? Do you just take your robot and just dunk it in chlorine? No! There's millions of dollars of technology and R& D and all that stuff in, into these multi thousand dollar, tens of thousand dollar machines that are, you can't just dunk it into that.
So sanitizing this equipment is going to be complicated. We were talking about with the boar's head thing, sanitizing the cutters for the deli meat. That is going to be complicated, right? And that's a pretty easy, simple piece of machine and equipment. You can sanitize fairly, very well. Flippy, it's going to be a little bit more complicated.
And we're talking about Flippy, the fryer, whatever the chance, not whatever, right? We're in food safety. There's no such thing as whatever, but the chances of something going wrong with that or a food safety outbreak happening are very minute. But what about Flippy, the sushi maker? It hasn't been out there yet.
But in a decade, no problem. There's a lot of sushi chefs that make a lot of money that a robot can do probably better. Just some meat and then put it on some rice. And then you get something wrong with that. We're not talking about fried food. Now we're talking about fish, raw fish,
Francine: and let's just move into marketing for just a second.
A. I for marketing. People are using a generated images for marketing. And one thing that we don't pay enough attention to is our marketing. And oftentimes the marketing isn't meeting the FDA food code. And there's nothing more embarrassing for me as a food safety expert is when somebody sends out marketing.
From the food service industry or a government entity or the National Restaurant Association, and they know this, that doesn't meet the food code. It's like the image is entirely wrong and it doesn't, it just doesn't meet the food code. That is so embarrassing. Look at your images and make sure that they meet the food code AI generated or not.
So
Matt: yeah, it's like her biggest pet peeve. Like what she put, she doesn't use WTF on LinkedIn until that happens in a restaurant. Somebody's doing an interview. ABC local news is doing an interview with the guy that owns this restaurant and they're cooking in the restaurant and everything that they're doing would be something you would give them an infraction for.
And it's on the news. She's, oh my God,
Francine: talking norovirus with their hand contact. They're like eating
Matt: in there. They're playing with the food and yeah. Yeah.
Francine: So yeah, as we we've already talked about, consumers are driving the industry and they're a loud voice. And how are they doing it with their pocketbooks?
Matt: They switch. And their votes. Yeah. But their pocketbooks are the biggest driver.
Francine: Yeah.
Matt: So where we see the future going is not a political issue, but it is a voter issue and consumers are voters. And this is going to be a huge impact. And as. Congress as state administrators and as local councilmen and women start looking at this, they're going to see that it doesn't matter.
It is a nonpartisan issue and consumers are going to make a lot of changes over the next decade.
Francine: I would like to see the Congress and the Senate. I would love to see at some point. Somebody run with food safety is part of their campaign. Just have that be part of their campaign. We never talk about food safety in the election.
Never ever has anybody made food safety, but yet every day we hear about recalls and foodborne illness outbreaks. It's always in the news. Have you ever once heard a congressman or a Senate talk about food safety?
Matt: No, but if they do, they talk about it like we have the safest food in the world. And we're like, no, Europe does.
At one point in time, we probably did. Europe does now. And I say Europe, the EU in general.
Francine: So, and it's yesterday, Justin mentioned that it, what you do is a thankless job.
Matt: Holy cow. It
Francine: is very easy to become jaded. And I know that when I was first asked to go into this jurisdiction and do these so naive to do this job, I was excited.
I wrote a book and I talked about this in the book. I was so excited. I got up. The first day and I went in to do this job and it was so positive and I have this jacket and my thermometer everything I needed and I go to my first stop and introduce myself and they're like, I'm sorry, you have to call and schedule an appointment.
And I'm like, excuse me, they said, you have to call and schedule an appointment. You just can't show up to do the inspection. And I'm like, no, that's not how this is going to work. And they said, well, you're not coming in. And I said, yes, I am. And I'm trying to be really nice because I don't want to make enemies.
And they insisted that I schedule an appointment and I'm like, I'm not coming back. I'm going to do this today and I'm going to be back twice a year. So you're going to have to let me in. And they're like, well, the last inspector always scheduled an appointment. And I said, okay, well, that was in the past.
This is how this is going to work now. And I have heels on. I'm five feet tall. I weigh 115 pounds. I have a big attitude. I don't like to use it, but I can. And she said, okay, well, I don't want it to work like this. I said, I understand that. I don't either. But I'm coming back. So I did. I did the inspection.
And I think she's lying to me. I really thought she was lying to me. So I go to the next stop and they're like, we haven't had an inspection in four years. The old inspector would just drop it off and we'd sign the paper and I said, still think they're lying to me, right? And I'm like, okay, well, that's not how I'm going to do this.
I'm going to be here twice a year and I'm not going to just drop the paper off and have you sign it. I'm going to actually do the inspection. And so I went back, did the inspection. Let me tell you, everybody in this town hated me. It's how I ended up in front of City Council. Yeah, yeah,
Matt: they were for like, how many, uh, how many restaurants did you shut down to finish?
Francine: 20 percent of the restaurants. Hot Widow, I think. It was bad. This went on for two weeks. The last health inspection dropped off the inspection and we signed it. We haven't had an inspection for Eventually, I realized it was true. I saw the condition of these kitchens, cockroaches, rat infestations. I can't tell you how bad it was.
And we're not talking a major metropolitan city. We're talking a small town. And I did not like to shut you guys know it's well, if you're allowed to close restaurants, I'm not sure because I'm finding that sometimes isn't allowed, but I closed 20 percent of the restaurants my first year and I was not proud of that.
It was hard. It's hard to shut down a restaurant and I taught preaching to acquire, but there's a lot of paperwork and then you're doubling your workload. You have to go back and you have to re inspect, reopen. And we are making enemies all over the place. And that is not what I wanted to do. And one of my worst days ever was an ethnic restaurant.
It was a Chinese restaurant and I spent probably eight hours in there. And when I closed a restaurant, I just. I didn't just shut it down. I spent the time in there explaining what was wrong, how we correct it, and how we keep it from happening again. Because I truly care about these people, because you're not just shutting them down.
It's like their livelihood. They can't pay their bills because they're closed. And there's a lot of inspectors that just let them be closed. I would get back there when they were ready, re inspect them and get them open again as quickly as I could, because every day they're closed, they're not earning money and they can't pay their bills.
They're closed. There was this one situation with this Chinese restaurant that I had closed. Some people think they do this stuff intentionally, but you don't know what you don't know. And if nobody's done your inspection for four years and they have, she was not doing her job. She was not qualified to be an inspector.
She was not qualified. And I shut this Chinese restaurant down. The kids came in from school and when I say kids came in from school, they were seven and nine years old. These people didn't speak English, so it was very hard to communicate with them. It was very minimal English, and it was a cockroach infestation.
There was cross contamination. There was stuff dripping out of the hood that was like thick, heavy oil onto the food that they were serving. Let's not talk about temperature abuse, or the cross contamination, and the things that were in the walk in cooler.
Matt: Which probably made that food taste a little bit better.
Francine: Maybe, I don't know. It
Matt: was like their secret sauce.
Francine: So, as we locked the doors, there was somebody, and I had on a white jacket and clipboard. As we locked the doors, there was somebody eating lunch. And they're like, can we finish eating? Is it okay? And I'm thinking, God, you don't want to, but I'm sure go ahead.
Go ahead. So anyway, the kids had to translate to their parents, interpret to the parents what I was saying. That was one of the most intense. Difficult days of my career because the kids were struggling because what they were saying was disrespectful to their parents because of the culture and I was being as polite as I possibly could, but they had to tell their parents what I was saying and that they had to close and my God, it was hard.
And I'm sure that there are people in this room that have probably been in that position. That day is the only day that I ever walked out to my car, and I sat there and I cried. It was tough, and there are people that don't understand what we do as health inspectors. And so when I tell you that I appreciate what you do, and I know what you do, I know what you do.
And so thank you for what you do, because it is so difficult to be a health inspector and to do your jobs. So again, thank you, and I appreciate what you do.