As we gathered information to build Fined Dining earlier this year, we were a little surprised by how many restaurants violate health and safety rules. We sort of wondered whether more people get sick in Florida restaurants than in other states. We even thought we might try to figure that out someday.
Florida is one of the most populous states, though, and it does serve a lot of restaurant meals to tourists and locals. So, we chalked up the numbers to scale. Turns out our chalk was all wet. Florida really does deal in volume when it comes to making people sick from restaurant food.
A report based upon data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2005 (read it here), puts Florida at number one in the nation for cases of food poisoning from restaurants. We’re number one, again? Woo hoo!
One of the more telling statistical features that leaps out at you is that in 2005 Florida had almost 25 percent more outbreaks of food-borne illness from restaurants than did runner-up California, which has almost twice as many restaurants as Florida. In other words, the Sunshine State ran away with the title for most sickening restaurant food.
We are not pleased to convey this news but we are less hungry for lunch, so there is an up side. Another up side is that Fined Dining came along at a good time and could be, if not a solution, a mitigating element.
Our impression is that Florida doesn’t mess around when it comes to enforcing restaurant health and safety rules. The state has inspectors out there doing the job. In July alone it fined 265 restaurants a combined $226,625 for 817 violations. Frankly, we suspect some restaurants are willing to risk fines as a cost of doing business rather than go to the trouble and expense of constantly maintaining clean and safe facilities. After all, a fine hurts the bottom line once but there is always more money to be made and hardly anyone even knows which restaurants have been fined, much less remembers a month or two after the fact. Pay up, raise the price of soda a little and keep serving, says the cynic.
If enough people knew which restaurants got fined each month, and could quickly look to see which restaurants have been fined in the past, this equation might change. State enforcement might come with an added kick from the market. Market incentives are usually the strongest of all and in this case they might be strong enough to persuade more restaurants to stay strictly on the spic and span. Lost money is one thing. Lost customers? That’s a real hurt.
We’re not out to hurt anyone, of course, but we are out to help people inform themselves and each other. That’s why we created Fined Dining and that’s why we’ve just added a new link to the page. Directly below the link to our search tool, you will see a new link that directs you to a state search tool. Plug in the name of a restaurant and a city and it will show you not just inspection results but details in all their stomach-turning breadth. The state search tool won’t let you look up restaurants by city. And it doesn’t let you limit your search to fined restaurants. Fined Dining does both but it doesn’t give you details of what inspectors found that warranted punishment. Together, these tools make a great combination that lets you build your own detailed report about restaurants that have been fined for health and safety violations. Bon apetit!