Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – Public Service and The Market

[Cavemonster]

Really, if this ends up as much of a prolific problem as you believe it would be, then it would be quickly squelched by self-interested consumers and businesses. If you think about it, the consumers and businesses are on the same team in the case. The businesses want the patronage and the consumers want safe food. There is no motivation for poor sanitation, and every motivation for good sanitation.

I can think of quite a few motivations for poor sanitation and other risks.
I used to work at a diner. At one point during the summer, because we were opening the fridge a lot and it had been bought used and wasn't great to begin with, the temperature readings were above regulation levels for sustained periods. It was brought to the bosses attention that some of the fridge contents could be considered potentially unsafe, but she didn't want to throw it out.

Reason one: Saves money! Discarding ingredients past expiration date after exposure to too high temperatures, or after potentially contaminating incidents can cost restaurant owners who have razor thin margins, a lot of money.

At that same restaurant, although regulations and sanitary recommendations called for a small amount of bleach to be used doing the dishes, the owner was a save the earth type, and so hemmed and hawed and ended up not using the bleach about half the time.

Reason number two: Personality

Most restaurants, indeed, most service companys I know of are routinely understaffed. This is part of "saves money" but a bit more specific. once they've budgeted the staff pay, they need to budget the time. Depending on management style they often just heap tasks onto the young employees, who may not have time to complete all sanitation without cutting corners.

Reason number three: Saves time!

And as stated before, with a full day passing before symptoms of some illnesses, accountability may likely never come!

 

[Leif Roar]

Awww, you left out my strongest point...

That restaurants would self-publish? That's only relevant if there actually were to exist underwriting companies whose results the restaurants could refer to. I don't think such companies are realistic for restaurant hygiene.

You know that shady Chinese place that nobody goes to? Same type of thing.

No, it's not. A shabby exterior, dirty linens and bad service is readily apparent to the public. Bad hygiene in the kitchen and storage area is not.

Another thing, if the food poisoning occurs at such a low frequency that you can't even tell which restaurant is doing it, then it is really occurring at any higher frequency than now? You seem to admit at least that instant throw-up food isn't sustainable for the restaurant.

It's not a question of frequency. Food poisonings of various severities are common -- everybody has a mild case from time to time. The problem is identifying the source. Even when you have a mass outbreak of serious food-born diseases -- like the recent E-coli case in Germany -- that's actively investigated by a large and resource-rich organisation who has the required expertise, it is very difficult and time-consuming to track the cases back to the source.

Really, if this ends up as much of a prolific problem as you believe it would be, then it would be quickly squelched by self-interested consumers and businesses. If you think about it, the consumers and businesses are on the same team in the case. The businesses want the patronage and the consumers want safe food. There is no motivation for poor sanitation, and every motivation for good sanitation.

There's plenty of motivation for poor sanitation: good sanitation is expensive. You have to throw out produce that's probably still good, you have to spend time (and wages) to clean down the kitchen often and throughly, you have to spend time managing and training staff in food hygiene, you have to run your dishwashers at more expensive tempratures -- in some cases you might have to close the kitchen (and with that the restaurant and your source of income) while problems and issues of hygiene are sorted out.

So it was just a total crap shoot whether eating in a restaurant would get you poisoning or not before these regulations? Seems unlikely to me. There is a definite motivation on the part of the business to be sanitary, particularly if this is of concern to the consumer.

A total crap shot? Not really. Even if the food hygiene in the kitchen is downright bad, you're not likely to get food poisoning from eating food prepared in it -- just more likely. (Nor is eating food prepared in a kitchen with good hygiene any guarantee that you can't possibly get food poisoning from eating it -- but it helps.)

The reason why we have standards of hygiene for restaurants is twofold. First of all to reduce (but not eliminate) the prevalence of food born diseases. Secondly, to help prevent mass outbreaks that make a lot of people sick at once.

And, yes, a mass outbreak can probably sourced to the offending restaurant and, yes, it's likely to be the death of that restaurant. However, they're too rare to serve as a general regulatior of behaviour. And, more importantly, by the time a mass outbreak occurs -- well, by then it's too late, isn't it?

 

[Leif Roar]

At that same restaurant, although regulations and sanitary recommendations called for a small amount of bleach to be used doing the dishes, the owner was a save the earth type, and so hemmed and hawed and ended up not using the bleach about half the time.

"Yes, I agree we should protect the environment, but does that really have to include the e-coli on the dishes?"

 

[commandlinegamer]

Ramsay's behaviour was also more subdued in his show The F Word (another U.K.-made entry).

But I can't imagine US not bleeping all the ****s which you can hear in all their glory in the UK.

 

[stilicho]

It can take days, hours or even minutes depending on the pathogen.
When my Dad got sick, it was more than a little loose stool, it was serious vomiting, sweats, the works late into the night. Not fatal, but the kind of thing worth avoiding. Whether he got it at the place we thought or not,my parents had been travelling and only eating at restaurants for several days, so it didn't come from food he prepared.

But that's anecdotal.

According to the CDC, there are ~76 million food borne illnesses a year in the US. 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. That's about a quarter of the US population getting sick.

Now there's no data on what percentage is attributable to restaurants, but having worked in several and having friends who worked in several, from fast food to Mom n. Pop to upscale, the level of sanitation in most restaurant kitchens is only a little better than home kitchens. And considering how many restaurants employ young people who'd rather be doing something else, maybe a little worse.

The only times food borne illness reaches the news are when it's a massive recall or there is a death or extremely serious hospitalization. A restaurant could be giving salmonella to somebody once a month, and since the disease can take up to 24 hours for effects to show, it could easily never be traced to them.

I wonder about that statistic. Point one per cent hospitalisations? I work for a company with about 1,400 employees in Canada alone. 350 of them should be poisoned at some time during the year. One or two a year should be claiming food poisoning from our health insurance plan and be hospitalised for it. We've been around for just about 30 years so there's a chance someone should have died of it by now.

Sounds high, doesn't it?

I am pretty sure I've never been poisoned by food but maybe I have been and didn't even know it. By the CDC calculation I really should have been by now--several times--and if I live to 100 I should at least know one, two, three, maybe five people who've been hospitalised from a confirmed case of food poisoning.

From what they're saying, this is possibly one of the most costly epidemics in history. Are we sure it's not just hungry folks ordering too much Baconate on their Baconators?

 

[3point14]

The article compares the recipe for private business to succeed with the coercion of the State, and demonstrates why private markets always promote the improvement of service, value and quality, while the State brings about the exact opposite.

I love the absoluteism here. No room for manouver, no possibility that one thing may act differently from another, no acceptance of nuance or difference, just a blanket statement that everything is better in private hands.

 

[Leif Roar]

I wonder about that statistic. Point one per cent hospitalisations? I work for a company with about 1,400 employees in Canada alone. 350 of them should be poisoned at some time during the year. One or two a year should be claiming food poisoning from our health insurance plan and be hospitalised for it. We've been around for just about 30 years so there's a chance someone should have died of it by now.

I would assume that a large majority of the hospitalizations would be for small children and elderly, not working adults.

 

[Cavemonster]

I wonder about that statistic. Point one per cent hospitalisations? I work for a company with about 1,400 employees in Canada alone. 350 of them should be poisoned at some time during the year. One or two a year should be claiming food poisoning from our health insurance plan and be hospitalised for it. We've been around for just about 30 years so there's a chance someone should have died of it by now.

Sounds high, doesn't it?

I am pretty sure I've never been poisoned by food but maybe I have been and didn't even know it. By the CDC calculation I really should have been by now--several times--and if I live to 100 I should at least know one, two, three, maybe five people who've been hospitalised from a confirmed case of food poisoning.

From what they're saying, this is possibly one of the most costly epidemics in history. Are we sure it's not just hungry folks ordering too much Baconate on their Baconators?

Sounds high yes, but as Leif pointed out, statistics rarely represent an even distribution across a population.

For instance, Muhammad is the most popular name in the world, yet I've lived in town where people lived to be 100 without ever meeting a person named Muhammad.

Similarly, deaths from food poisoning aren't spread evenly over the population, they often occur clustered around a tainted shipment.

As Leif pointed out, hospitalizations and deaths are bound to skew towards the elderly, children, and people with compromised immune systems.

Also for what it's worth, the statistics are for the US, not Canada, and just like there's a marked difference between obesity rates on each side of the border, it's reasonable to think food borne illness may vary as well.

 

[bonzombiekitty]

As for Gordon's show, has it ever occured to you that they might A: only pick restaurants where they think it will actually work? and B: Only show actual successes?

While they may try and choose restaurants that have a better chance of surviving, they certainly don't only show the successes. One restaurant down the street from me was on the show and closed within a year of the air date. I'd never been to it before, as it really had a lot going against it. There's a much larger selection of better restaurants in a much nicer part of town about a 10 minute walk away, so it needed something to really stand out and attract people. It just didn't have that. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.

A good portion of the restaurants on his show end up closing, but they were restaurants already on the verge of closing. Taking that into consideration combined with the fact that restaurants have a high chance of failure no matter what, his results aren't too shabby.

 

[stilicho]

Sounds high yes, but as Leif pointed out, statistics rarely represent an even distribution across a population.

For instance, Muhammad is the most popular name in the world, yet I've lived in town where people lived to be 100 without ever meeting a person named Muhammad.

Similarly, deaths from food poisoning aren't spread evenly over the population, they often occur clustered around a tainted shipment.

As Leif pointed out, hospitalizations and deaths are bound to skew towards the elderly, children, and people with compromised immune systems.

Also for what it's worth, the statistics are for the US, not Canada, and just like there's a marked difference between obesity rates on each side of the border, it's reasonable to think food borne illness may vary as well.

Back to the topic, incidentally, I finally watched an episode of the TV show that started it all.

The show centred around a struggling restaurant in Queens that had--surprise--a bad cook in the kitchen and poor service. Sure as shooting, Chef Ramsay shouted, gesticulated, fulminated, and turned the place right around so that a smiling guest mumbled that he'd bring clients in. (It was odd they had to use subtitles because the guest had his back turned to the mike, I guess, and his female companion didn't even mind that his head was practically swivelled to stare at the restaurateur's boobs.)

I looked up the place on-line and there were a lot more issues with that place than the show revealed. It's in a huge building that must bear very considerable overhead. The steaks were priced too high. The service was horrible (even after Chef Ramsay visited).

The kicker was that the owners apparently parlayed their appearance on the show into a thriving gift card racket that must have paid off handsomely after they went out of business later the same year.

In its spot, there's a German beergarden style restaurant that has overwhelmingly positive reviews in spite of not having had a visit from a TV chef.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is but the new establishment at the same location seems to be thriving although their cook hasn't been screamed at by a celebrity, to my knowledge. Maybe the lesson learned is to get into gift cards. Even if the entrepreneur doesn't run off on a long trip to the Bahamas with your money, it's still a great idea to get customers to freely contribute to the working capital.

 

[EGarrett]

Wow.


Carry on.

As I expected, that's not an answer.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Back to the topic, incidentally, I finally watched an episode of the TV show that started it all.

The show centred around a struggling restaurant in Queens that had--surprise--a bad cook in the kitchen and poor service. Sure as shooting, Chef Ramsay shouted, gesticulated, fulminated, and turned the place right around so that a smiling guest mumbled that he'd bring clients in. (It was odd they had to use subtitles because the guest had his back turned to the mike, I guess, and his female companion didn't even mind that his head was practically swivelled to stare at the restaurateur's boobs.)

I looked up the place on-line and there were a lot more issues with that place than the show revealed. It's in a huge building that must bear very considerable overhead. The steaks were priced too high. The service was horrible (even after Chef Ramsay visited).

The kicker was that the owners apparently parlayed their appearance on the show into a thriving gift card racket that must have paid off handsomely after they went out of business later the same year.

In its spot, there's a German beergarden style restaurant that has overwhelmingly positive reviews in spite of not having had a visit from a TV chef.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is but the new establishment at the same location seems to be thriving although their cook hasn't been screamed at by a celebrity, to my knowledge. Maybe the lesson learned is to get into gift cards. Even if the entrepreneur doesn't run off on a long trip to the Bahamas with your money, it's still a great idea to get customers to freely contribute to the working capital.

This is an example of how the whole country would thrive if we would just elect Libertards. Or something.

 

[elbe]

Question for anyone who watches the show: would you want to eat at a restaurant featured on the show after watching it, especially knowing how unhygienic the kitchen may have been before it was "fixed" by Ramsay?

Personally, I think a public history might dissuade more people than the improvements would persuade.

 

[Leif Roar]

Question for anyone who watches the show: would you want to eat at a restaurant featured on the show after watching it, especially knowing how unhygienic the kitchen may have been before it was "fixed" by Ramsay?

It depends a lot on what was wrong with the restaurant. Nothing could get me to eat at Bonapartes, and I would be hesitante to eat at a few others, but for most of the restaurants featured (at least in the UK version) the kitchens were rarely actively bad when it came to hygiene.

 

[stilicho]

This is an example of how the whole country would thrive if we would just elect Libertards. Or something.

The new German beer & schnitzel eatery that's now there also serves a Jack Daniels™ based cocktail called The Panzer. I think I'd go there just for one of those.

 

[Agatha]

I wouldn't want to eat at the restaurant featured on the most recent episode of KN USA shown here in the UK, but I wouldn't be able to even if I did want to, as it's now closed down according the voice over.

 

[Dunstan]

If anyone wants to discuss the show itself, as opposed to whatever dubious economic/political conclusions people want to draw from it, I started a thread here

 

[NotJesus]

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