Restaurant Grades
Legislators: Find another industry to pick on

The June 21, 2010 story in USA Today on restaurant health inspection grades offers another example of how a bored and misguided legislator walks around looking for ways to get their name on a new piece of legislation at the cost of the restaurant industry.

The story starts out:

It’s a Saturday night in Washington, the Capitol rotunda is in view, and you’re walking along the avenue, trying to decide where to eat.

Posted outside restaurants’ windows are menus, Zagat ratings and clippings of local newspaper reviews. What’s missing, says D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh, is information about the restaurants’ sanitary conditions.

Cheh supports requiring restaurants to display a letter grade based on their most recent health department inspection. She says that now, residents must file public records requests for details on restaurant inspections.

“Surely the nation’s capital, with all its restaurants, you’d think we’d be a little more progressive,” she says.

This is exactly how it happens, folks.  A legislator like Mary Cheh is walking around bored, looking for something creative she can champion and look like a hero.  You know, get her name on a bill, some good press; nothing too controversial for her constituents.  “Wow, look at these busy restaurants,” she mumbles in half-baked fascination.  “Why don’t I figure out a way to slap them with new legislation and legal requirements – look how busy they are – it won’t hurt them and my constituents will rally behind this idea…boy, Mary, you are so smart”, she thinks to herself.

The story goes on to state how shrinking budgets are cutting health inspectors in the field so this is one idea for how to get the public to police restaurants.  There’s a quip in a sidebar story about how we are all familiar with letter grades and how they work.  My favorite quip though is Councilwoman Cheh’s about how she would expect more from the nation’s capital (those poor D.C. restaurateurs having to deal with politicians like Cheh babbling and bumbling about dreaming up new and unnecessary regulations in their dining rooms).

Sure, this all sounds perfectly logical to a layman.  Many restaurant industry professionals refute this notion though and I am one of them.  Yes, I want to eat in a safe and clean restaurant just as much as the next person.  What I don’t want though is the government forcing us to clutter up our menus with nutrition information, constantly hit a low-margin industry with new taxes and minimum wage hikes, and then mandate obtrusive signage and Scarlet-Letter type grades outside our restaurants.

If restaurants have to post a grade out front of their business why shouldn’t others?  Shouldn’t an emergency room have to post how many lawsuits and negligence claims they had last year?  Shouldn’t a hotel have to post at their check-in desk a report of how many of their rooms were found to have bodily fluids on their blankets during last month’s random inspection?  Shouldn’t all lawyers have to post their college transcripts including their grades in ethics curriculum?  These are important too, right?

If Councilwoman Cheh really wanted to do something that moves us further in the direction of transparency, she should suggest a law where all legislators wear a badge on their chest with their criminal records and number ethics violations.  It’s just as important to know if our legislators have criminal records, one could argue.  Think the United States Congress would go for that?  Okay, okay, well maybe forcing them to wear it is over the top, but how about if they at least have post it in full on their websites and in the voting booths?

How far should transparency go?  And shouldn’t the standard of the law be applied equally across all business sectors?

The fact is we all eat out.  Half of every food dollar in the U.S. is spent in restaurants.  Legislators likely spend 80% of their food dollar there, what with the schmoozing and all.  They usually have no idea how the business works but look around at the bustling tables and eventually get one of those light-bulb moments thinking they are the first to find a new approach to legislate the industry in a way to gain popular favor among all those other dining patrons they see.

The restaurant industry is the largest non-governmental, non-agricultural employer in the United States employing over 13 million people.  The restaurant business is incredibly capital intensive and has an average profit margin of just 5%.  The restaurant associations do their best fighting-off unnecessary and poorly conceived legislation but with limited budgets they too have to pick and choose battles. 

If restaurants have to wear their grades on their front doors other regulated and licensed businesses should have to also.  Let’s start with the politicians first.

Full USA Today Story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-06-21-healthinspect21_ST_N.htm

Restaurant Consultant Aaron Allen