Comments on: Colour Coded Restaurant Inspections

By: Steve Baker

Steve Baker — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:49:48 +0000

I think it was a year ago when CFPL (I refuse to call it A Channel or A) ran a series about restaurant cleanliness. The only one which was shown to have repeatedly ignored warnings was a Chinese food restaurant in Byron, where I live. I’m not a fan of Chinese food but my wife is and having seen that, she made a concious effort to give her business to the other Chinese food restaurant in our neighbourhood. I personally welcome any type of public notification about such things. We can always refine the coding of infractions but let’s get the information out. Maybe instead of moving from green, yellow & red to red/green as you suggest, we need a broader range of coulurs, indicating minor and gradually more significant infractions?

By: Kevin Van Lierop

Kevin Van Lierop — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:45:24 +0000

I don’t doubt for one minute that it would be detrimental to a restaurants business but I think it would be far more effective if it was Red OR Green, taking out the guess work.

If I saw a yellow I would be thinking to myself “So one of the cooks didnt wash his hands when the inspector was there so the place must be ok to eat at.” With this example who is to say that if one employee isnt doing what they should be health/safety wise the rest of the employees arent.

I just think when it comes to public safety there should be no guess work, but then again society is full of guess work, inconsistencies and such.

By: Phronk

Phronk — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:53:12 +0000

I’m not sure how this has gone down in other cities, but I bet even a yellow sign will be detrimental to an restaurant’s business, making it pretty much a “green or not green” system. But at the same time, I think it would encourage honest inspections. If it were only green and red, it would be hard for an inspector to give a red card to a restaurant with only minor problems.

In any case, I hope the system they chose is based on research on what works best for both the public and the restaurants. Public input is nice, but really all we can do is idle speculation.