Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

DEP E117
===

[00:00:00] Francine L Shaw: There's something, I think we've talked about this before, called a fill factor. Yeah. Which is a real thing. You're allowed so many buck parts, so many hairs, so many

[00:00:11] Matt Regusci: in food. Yes. Mold

[00:00:12] Francine L Shaw: in food. That's a real thing. Nothing clean, so to speak. In one of my

[00:00:17] Matt Regusci: previous labs, we actually did those testing how many bug parts in a can of food, for instance, and we would actually have people counting bug parts in a can of food.

It's a real thing, guys. It's crazy.

[00:00:30] Francine L Shaw: Yeah. If you knew what was in peanut butter or certain items, you just probably might not eat them.

[00:00:43] intro: Everybody's 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 Regu for a deep dive [00:01:00] food safety. It all down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.

Don't eat

[00:01:07] Matt Regusci: poop. Hello? Hello, Francine.

[00:01:10] Francine L Shaw: Hey Matt.

[00:01:12] Matt Regusci: What an exciting day Today. We have so many interesting things that we can talk about that Francine and I are actually, you had a hard time choosing between a cockroach infant station or rat infant station, and we decided to go with cockroaches. This time

[00:01:31] Francine L Shaw: we keep the rats for later.

You're struggling to talk about rats or cockroach and you can't,

[00:01:39] Matt Regusci: which way you wanna go. So Francine and I track the numbers fairly well on our podcast. We can track like how many downloads are done. We can't track very well how many people are just streaming and not downloading it. The other thing we can't track is when people actually listen to the episode or download the episode.

You would love to [00:02:00] know if people avoid meal times before listening to our show.

[00:02:05] Francine L Shaw: We can't look at what time they're downloaded. We can, yeah. Anybody who listen to the last episode since that clearly, I think closer than you do. Well,

[00:02:16] Matt Regusci: wow. Once it defies the odds. Francine actually understands technology way better than I do.

And I like, I literally started a software company 20 years ago that's still used in the industry today, and I've worked for three other software companies and I obviously, I was not programming on any of that. I didn't help develop too. That's true. I did. That's true. And you were way more involved. In the development of that, then yeah,

[00:02:48] Francine L Shaw: I talk about my career enough.

I really don't.

[00:02:51] Matt Regusci: Yeah, but you and I both don't, and you know what? That's probably why this goes well is we don't really advertise ourselves [00:03:00] very much on this. No.

[00:03:02] Francine L Shaw: Yeah. I hope don't.

[00:03:03] Matt Regusci: I mean, we advertise ourselves, but not our businesses.

[00:03:05] Francine L Shaw: Two software programs.

[00:03:07] Matt Regusci: Yeah. Okay. This article is very interesting again.

If you listen to last week's episode, if you did it, you should. 'cause that was, I think it was a good episode. But I, you know, I know I might be biased. I think my new favorite writer on food safety news is this Jonin guy. I gotta figure out how to pronounce his last name. Is it French? Is it Palle or Palette?

[00:03:32] Francine L Shaw: I think it's, we want it to be French. Joan, I don't want him to be front a little bit more sophisticated to introduce. Bill needs to introduce us to this individual and we're gonna be embarrassed. If it's a she, it could be a she. I don't know.

[00:03:50] Matt Regusci: That's true. That's true. I would think of Jonin as a guy, but it could be a girl.

[00:03:56] Francine L Shaw: Oh, I'm gonna connect with this individual after we're done here. That's what I'm gonna do. [00:04:00] Love the writing style of this individual. Love it. So anyway, let's talk about this article. Let's talk about the article. Cockroaches.

[00:04:08] Matt Regusci: Cockroaches. Hey, so, so many things about this article are interesting. Okay. This Hoi Toi, I assume it's a Hoi toi tonic bar, is what this article says.

It's cockroach violation, shuts down air ones. We're terrible at pronunciation today, luxury Tonic bar in Santa Monica. So let's put some context around Santa Monica. If nobody's ever been to Santa Monica or doesn't really know much about Santa Monica. Santa Monica is one of the richest areas in one of the richest cities in the United States.

So Santa Monica is on the beach of Los Angeles. Beautiful. Beautiful place, beautiful place. If you have time and you're going to LAX, you can go through the one at [00:05:00] Santa Monica and flip up and it's just gorgeous. And you see these houses in Santa Monica that are on the cliffs. They are massive houses and they're yards are insane.

And you know that their security system has to be absolutely amazing. So it is a beautiful place, but it's old. So the town of Santa Monica is really old for California standards, right? Like people on the east coast are going, whatever. It's not old. Our place has been open since the 14 hundreds, 15 hundreds, not 14 hundreds.

That's what, come on, Matt. You understand history

[00:05:38] Francine L Shaw: like way back. I don't know what you've been drinking, but. There's a song about Santa Monica Boulevard, and every time I hear Santa Monica, I think about that song I'm dating myself. I don't know what the song was or who sang it, but

[00:05:54] Matt Regusci: yeah. But for California, it's an old town, so there's a lot of older buildings [00:06:00] that have been refurbished and all that stuff, but this luxury grocery store is famed for its $20 smoothies.

So. Like I have a hard time spending like five, six bucks for a smoothie. Okay. I really pushed, there are, Francine has really good rat stories, but I really pushed for this one because Francine has amazing cockroach stories. Those of you who don't know, my whole entire career has mainly been on the supply chain side.

When I work with retailers or food service companies, it tends to be more on the supply chain than their actual stores. Where Francine's career has been more on the retail side and the service side, and she's now gone into the supply chain side. But I don't have as many fun stories about cockroaches as Francine does.

Oh my gosh. So we will have to get into some of those. And I can't remember whether you've known someone for a long [00:07:00] time. When you know all the stories from that person, but you can't remember where you heard them from. I can't remember if I read this in your book or if you had told me beforehand these stories or it was a combo of two.

'cause I know you've told me a bunch of stories that ultimately ended up in the book when we were, when I was reading and commenting on your book before published. But yeah, you have amazing crazy cockroach stories, which is so disgusting.

[00:07:28] Francine L Shaw: They are.

[00:07:30] Matt Regusci: So disgust it. I don't even know where to start. Okay. So you can imagine that in some of these old buildings that have been around for a long time, cockroaches are probably gonna be around there.

But at the same time, if you're paying 20 bucks for a smoothie or a tonic, you probably don't

[00:07:49] Francine L Shaw: want cockroaches. The added ingredients. Just guessing.

Yeah. No.

Okay, so, [00:08:00] okay,

[00:08:00] Matt Regusci: before we go further on, what is your craziest cockroach story? Rezi.

[00:08:06] Francine L Shaw: Oh my God. So two come to mind. One of them is actually in manufacturing and the other one is in a restaurant.

So good to go with the restaurant. First we were doing, it had been shut down by the health department, and I went in as a consultant and we were actually it. This was a franchise. We were actually called by the corporation. This restaurant had been shut down by the health department corporate called and said, we need your help, this restaurant.

So they're

[00:08:36] Matt Regusci: like, we need the big guns. We need need to go and fix this place up.

[00:08:41] Francine L Shaw: We need to get them opened as quickly as possible because they're down for the count and how soon can you get there? So I called the operator right away and said, look, I. I would be there tomorrow morning. I tell me as much as you can, I've got, you know what I need to know from corporate.

Tell me as [00:09:00] much as you can about what's going on. So. They had already called their current PCL Pest Control Operator, and I'm like, well, clearly that guy's not doing a good job. I need you to call somebody else and bono this guy's, your current PCO is spraying water or what's happening, but you've been shut down for a copper infestation.

He is not spraying the chemical that he needs to spray, so you need to call somebody else. So I had him call a reputable PCO. To come in and fog. And what that needs is they spray with heavy duty chemicals like nobody can be in the building. And he said, would you want 'em to us to do that right away or do you want them to do it later?

And I said, no, you need to get them in right away. So they came in and they sprayed right away or they bombed the building basically, is what we call it. Yeah. And I went in the next morning. In the meantime, I called somebody that had just graduated from college. With their master's degree. And [00:10:00] I am sure this is not what this girl expected she would be doing.

[00:10:04] Matt Regusci: She's like, this is gonna be a cushy, great job,

[00:10:07] Francine L Shaw: food safety and restaurant. I'm like, look, I need you to put me tomorrow morning. Bring a sweatshirt. What a sweatshirt with you? And she's like, why? And I'm like, because um, if this job band is like that, it's gonna be ed, it's gonna be falling from the ceiling.

And so she does, she believe you. I don't think anybody believes it can be that back. And she's like, are you serious? And I'm like, I'm that serious. And so we get there in the morning and we walk up to the door and you can literally see cockroaches on the ceiling. And they're dying. They're coming down.

And I had on a suit and like a pair of, I was stressed professionally. I.

[00:10:53] Matt Regusci: So when you say a suit, you were dressed like in PPE?

[00:10:57] Francine L Shaw: No, I'm, no, I, no.

[00:10:59] Matt Regusci: You were [00:11:00] actually like in a dress suit, like at a, yeah.

[00:11:02] Francine L Shaw: So we go in and you could literally hear copper just crunching when you walked. And when I say crunching, think it was on like peanut shell.

They were crunching under my shoes. And they're falling and you can't really react the way you want. Look's scratching my head. Really react the way you want to react, but it's like not a pleasant, you're like etching and it's not good. So to make long story short, like they were inside the milkshake machine.

They were like, they were everywhere. They were in between the bags. They were it because they hadn't gotten rid of all their stuff yet. Employees are in there and they're cleaning. Trying to get rid of this stuff. And I talked to the PCO and he's local. We sprayed three times the legal limit and we used, there's still a problem there.

This, I've never seen anything like this. The

[00:11:52] Matt Regusci: guy like says to you like, basically we just broke the law to save this restaurant.

[00:11:57] Francine L Shaw: They're living in the wheels and the bearings of the [00:12:00] equipment, they're living up in the legs, they're everywhere. We just, it's, this is intense. And the resistance I was met with from this guy was like, he didn't, you have to throw away everything you met from the restaurateur.

You mean the franchisee? Yeah, because he didn't want to throw away. It would, this was crazy, like downstairs. They had, and I'd never seen one of these operations with the downstairs, but they had a downstairs, they had a Coke machine that was leaking and there was like sticky syrup around the outside of this huge, it was a huge, it was like a CO2 machine.

It was like five feet tall and there was tacky syrup around the bottom. Mouse urine will glow under a black light. And I had a black light with me. And when I shined this black light, it glowed like a nuclear waste dump. And there were s stuck in this. It was like creating its own

[00:12:57] Matt Regusci: version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[00:13:00] There it was.

[00:13:01] Francine L Shaw: So, and I'm just thinking, Hey, I still can't talk. And this was like. Years ago, I felt so bad. The wall would wanna think. You wanna blame the manager and then she'll like, and this wasn't in a wall, this was a freestanding restaurant. So a lot of times you can think that, okay, so they're coming in from other stores or whatever.

This was freestanding. It was in the middle of a parking lot. This does not get to this extent overnight. This does not happen overnight. It took a while for it to get this bad and we need to get this restaurant open as quickly as. Possible. There were multiple issues. I looked 17 legal pages of notes. And

[00:13:43] Matt Regusci: so those of you who aren't in the United States, a standard paper is eight by 11.

A legal paper is 11 by 17. It's huge piece of paper used for legal documents in the United States.

[00:13:57] Francine L Shaw: This was on, this was on a Monday, [00:14:00] and these are the things you need to open before you can open when the House department comes back in. You don't just get inspected for the issues, you have everything ready for them to open.

The literal story is like in my book, I've seen them open. When I left, the corporate office called me and said, so do you think they can be open by tomorrow?

[00:14:22] Matt Regusci: And you're like, there's a lot of corrective actions here.

[00:14:25] Francine L Shaw: Have.

Jump in here. I'm like, that's not gonna happen. That is not gonna happen. And I'm a firm believer of you don't just go in and say what's wrong. You need to explain why and show them how they need to fix it. So I literally was showing employees, 'cause the employees were really working hard and there were some things that were guff.

I didn't have any hot water. I'm like, I was still an employee. Go get some. Water and I'll show you how to do this. And he goes up with cold water and I'm like, no, I'm sorry. This is my fault. [00:15:00] I didn't say hot water. I need you to go get me some hot water. And he's like, Manam, we don't have any hot water. And the green mean you don't have any water.

He is like, we don't have any hot water. We don't have any hot water for a couple days. At that time, it's like I needed to have a come to Jesus meeting with the man, the owner Anyway, so I'm super proud I hit that store open by Wednesday. Whoa, we were open. Now it took a lot of work,

[00:15:25] Matt Regusci: which means that owner listened to your comment to Jesus talk because that's he Did he understand?

[00:15:31] Francine L Shaw: He understood. Once we've got on the same page, you're not gonna open unless you do these things. 'cause this isn't me. Your health department isn't gonna let you open unless we do these things. And this is for your benefit. You won't open, they won't let you open unless they're not playing game. This is what you're gonna have to do.

So I get a lot of,

[00:15:53] Matt Regusci: is that the same one where you hit the roof and all the cockroaches fell down too? Or is that a different one? [00:16:00] Because I remember you telling me, like you just said, they were falling down from the sky, so I thought you were like whacking the roof, but, and tiles came up

[00:16:07] Francine L Shaw: where we, I think it may be we took a broom handle.

[00:16:11] Matt Regusci: Yeah. And

[00:16:12] Francine L Shaw: yeah.

It's

like raining dead cockroach, raining cockroaches. It was, and this poor girl that went with me was just like speechless. Just speechless because it's like, this isn't one

[00:16:25] Matt Regusci: school for, did she decide to get a new career decision? No. Or,

[00:16:31] Francine L Shaw: yeah, she's, ah, she's a trooper. Good. So I come back corporate offices like so, and I don't think they're sure that I would go back because I'm literally in this suit crawling around on my hands and knees, looking under like it's brier and, but all the things 'cause I was there to do a job and I did it and I gained a lot of respect from that corporation for doing that.

And when I left, I stopped on my way home literally, and [00:17:00] took that off. In a turnpike, I, in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania turnpike, restroom through the shoes, through the suit, through everything in the dumpster. I wouldn't take anything home with me. And the psychological damage that that did to me was intense.

And if I saw a dark salon on my floor, I could character wood in my house, which means it would like naughty if I, for months, if I caught like a dark spot on my floor or drop the piece of fuzz off of a brown blanket. It was instant panic. It was so bad.

[00:17:34] Matt Regusci: You had like TSD over this?

[00:17:37] Francine L Shaw: Yeah.

[00:17:37] Matt Regusci: Okay. If you had PTSD over this and you had been a health inspector before for many years and you had been doing this for many years, can you imagine what that you did?

That poor girl.

[00:17:47] Francine L Shaw: It was, well actually react while I was in there. You know what I mean? I know, but still, if you were having PTSD keep mind. They dead aches. Cockroaches were moving when I next day. Back the next [00:18:00] day. Keep in mind, this company used three times the legal limit. We had doors open the night like cook rushes.

Were still moving, they were still alive. My god, these things went through a nuclear holocaust. I mean, can you imagine getting a meal and having a to-go meal and reaching in the bag and a cockroach being in there?

Is that what happened? Knuckle. But it could. It could have, yeah. Yeah.

Before or on your tray or, and the disease.

It's not just the fact that they're there, but these things cause disease. Foodborne illnesses.

[00:18:41] Matt Regusci: Yes. Yes. They're pretty nasty. I was, okay, so I have a story that's not nearly like this, but. I was in New Orleans, obviously another old city, and we sat down like I was there. My grandma wanted to go to New Orleans before she passed away.

She'd never been before and she had lung [00:19:00] cancer, so I had to like wheel her around on these cobble stones. So I was already pretty annoyed at this whole entire trip. I was there with my wife, two of my aunts and my grandmother, and we were all sleeping in the same old hotel. This is like day number two.

Three of being on a trip of five days and I was already done because New Orleans is not a place you wanna have a family vacation, particularly with your grandma and your aunts. Like I was like, this is not fun. And we go to this restaurant for lunch. It's a open door patio and indoor restaurant on Bourbon Street, and I see a cockroach.

We're sitting down, I see a cockroach crawling into the restaurant. We're inside. It's like crawling in there. And I look at the waitress, she's taking our order and I said, is that a cockroach knowing full well it's a cockroach of food safety. And she's like, yes. And she STAs on the [00:20:00] cockroach and she says, now what would you like to eat?

I said, nothing. I'm good. I like, Hey guys, we're leaving. And I went and they were all like super mad 'cause they wanted to be at this restaurant. I was like, no. If we're seeing one cockroach. Crawl a floss across the floor and the waitress's first response is not to freak out, I don't want to eat in here.

This is, yeah. Obviously she's seen a few of these in this restaurant. Her first response is, I got it and then stomps on it. I'm like, nah, we're good. We're good. Yeah. Let's go someplace else.

[00:20:35] Francine L Shaw: So I was, the company told me one time, this is on the other side, there's something, I think we've talked about this before, called a fill factor.

Yeah, which is a real thing. You're allowed so many bug parts, so many hairs, so many

[00:20:50] Matt Regusci: in food. Yes,

[00:20:51] Francine L Shaw: mold in food. That's a real thing. Nothing's clean, so to speak. In one of my

[00:20:56] Matt Regusci: previous labs, we actually did those testing how many bug [00:21:00] parts in a can of food, for instance, and we would actually have people counting bug parts in a can of food.

It's a real thing, guys. It's crazy. Yeah.

[00:21:09] Francine L Shaw: If you knew what was in peanut butter or. Certain items you just probably might not eat. Vic was a product and when we went in, like this product was a dry product. It was an auger mixing it all together, you could see that there were ridges in there working independently and they had some issues and we were there to make sure that they were corrected and it died that week.

You've got a problem and they're like, that's okay. We'll be within the whole five minutes.

Are you kidding? No. We found it. We're good. We know what that, we know what that bar is. I'm like, I don't think so.

[00:21:57] Matt Regusci: Yeah. So, okay, so [00:22:00] back to this story. I really wanted Francine to tell that story, but this restaurant was not that bad, right? At least I. From the article that I could tell that's like an anomaly back what you just explained since it's been the, but it's one of my favorite stories that you tell me and if you, okay, I am gonna promote your book right now.

If you thought that story was interesting and you liked it and you thought it was funny, read Francine's book because there are chock full of stories like that and the way he tells those like in your book. Hilarious. Okay. I believe the name in the book is. Watching the kitchen. I was watching the kitchen.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm like, yeah. My Francine's book and I don't give the title. That's how bad we are promoting. I don't even wanna do it. Oh my gosh. Okay, so this store received a B grade with a score of 84 out of a hundred. They found two live nymphs of German cockroaches and one dead [00:23:00] cockroach in the cabinet beneath a simonelli coffee machine.

So a real highend coffee machine. And so it wasn't like they were finding these things all over the place, but if you find evidence of one, what do you see all the time? Franc. There's like thousands or million of them. There's

[00:23:13] Francine L Shaw: thousands that you don't see. I need to stop you for a minute. I don't know the name of my own book.

It's who Watches the kitchen. It's who Watches the kitchen. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, so if you see one, there's thousands that you don see, and if you're seeing them in the daylight, only the weakest come out during the daylight. You walk into the place and you flip on the light and they start to run.

Yeah. And

there's places like as an inspector, you know where to lock.

They like warm, moist, dark places. Warm, moist, dark places. So you know, when we're looking for cockroaches, yeah, we look for cockroach chip. Yeah know, because that was your job. You look at the refrigeration equipment, but you'd go in [00:24:00] and you'd take that panel off of like where the compressors are and there sometimes there's fins on those compressors and just be covered.

It would just look like a. Just covered in cockroaches and they just start to move and people will call because the refrigeration equipment is not working properly, and sometimes

it's because they're covered. There's so many cockroaches and they can't breathe. You don't have a refrigeration issue. You have a cockroach.

[00:24:31] Matt Regusci: Oh my gosh. So anybody who's thinking about having a glorious job as a food inspector, those are the type of things you could do is go find seeking cockroaches,

[00:24:41] Francine L Shaw: the people that know where not to eat. Your health inspectors, your delivery people, and your HVAC people.

[00:24:49] Matt Regusci: Yes. Okay. So this place was closed down on the eighth and then they got everything together and opened it back up.

Pretty quickly on the 10th, [00:25:00] so just like what you said. So I'm sure if you were able to get it done within two days, that horrendous place, this place was able to do it. But yeah, so the consumer reaction, as you can imagine, was a little bit not good. So news of the violation spread quickly on social media, particularly on Reddit's food, Los Angeles.

Can you imagine the foodies reading this and going what? Where users highlighted the contrast between the premium branding and the health code issue. A food safety professional commented, and this was not commented on April 9th, ongoing vermin and pest control should be at the top of the list for a grocery chain, especially one as upscale and all about quality as ER wants.

They've also been looking to hire a food safety manager for months now, so no wonder why things are slip. Isn't that funny? All the food safety people that are listening to this can only just shake their head and go, yeah, why are we always the bottom of the totem pole

[00:25:58] Francine L Shaw: for employment right now? Are [00:26:00] like, okay, yeah, yeah, we make sure this stuff doesn't happen.

Do you know that are looking for jobs right now? Yeah, we seen all the time

[00:26:10] Matt Regusci: On LinkedIn. LinkedIn it says Open for work. If you're needing a food safety person, go on LinkedIn and find everybody who says Open to work. Yeah, but they've been looking for a long time, Francine, a couple months now. Another user equipped, if they had just charged $20 per rat, people would be flocking over there while some mock the chains.

$19 strawberries and $20 smoothies. Loyal customers return for the coconut cloud smoothie and other offerings upon the reopening. And then they issued a statement. The grocery store or restaurant said We deeply regret that a cockroach is found in the tonic bar. We sincerely apologized for the lapse in our standards.

The company voluntarily closed the bar for thorough sanitization, emphasizing its weekly pest control visits and third party food consultants. I. The bar passed a follow-up inspection on [00:27:00] April 10th and reopened on the same day, so I 100% believe that Erwin's is probably the safest place to get any smoothie right now.

In fact, that they got closed down and opened up and they had all this stuff. Like the safest place to eat generally is the one that got shut down and had to open back up. So they should have

[00:27:23] Francine L Shaw: a test control operator. It comes regularly. They, they should have a PCO plan. They said it

[00:27:28] Matt Regusci: comes every week, but it could have been like your other story that you just told where they had the person coming in and they just weren't spraying correctly.

[00:27:37] Francine L Shaw: Like, but cheapest person isn't always the best. It's just like you should have approved vendors for clue. You should have an approved PCO person as well.

[00:27:49] Matt Regusci: Yep.

[00:27:50] Francine L Shaw: Yeah. And your food safety person, if you have one, should know what they're doing. You don't always hire the cheapest one you can find because maybe they don't [00:28:00] know what they're doing either.

[00:28:02] Matt Regusci: Okay, so one more time. Tell your, because you misnamed your book, what's the name of the book again? Who Watches The Kitchen? Who Watches The Kitchen by Francine Shaw.

[00:28:14] Francine L Shaw: So I wanna say that place was reopened in just a couple days. Those people worked around the clock, literally 24 hours a day, and there were, I'm gonna say probably a dozen people in there at any given time working.

It took a lot of effort to do that. A lot of effort.

[00:28:36] Matt Regusci: Yeah. I bet that was the same place, not same thing for Erwin's. I bet they were sweating bullets, particularly when it got out the next day. But my gosh, I could only imagine. I could only

[00:28:48] Francine L Shaw: imagine paying $20 per a smoothie.

[00:28:51] Matt Regusci: Yeah. And their clientele, I'm assuming the average clientele of this luxury tonic bar in Santa Monica.[00:29:00]

It's pretty high expectations, like when you hear about like actors and movie stars and musicians, one of them are in la. A lot of them live around there and they ask for crazy stuff when they're on set. So their expectations of their smoothies that they're paying 20 bucks for which they could care less when you have that much money.

20 bucks is, there's no difference between $20 or $5 in their minds, a hundred dollars. It's just, it's money.

[00:29:28] Francine L Shaw: They're not asking for a smoothie, but the cockroach on the side, no, no. They definitely are not for cockroach garnish garbage. My sense of humor is just not,

[00:29:44] Matt Regusci: we were meant for each other. Oh my gosh.

Okay, so on that note, don't eat [00:30:00] poop.