South Carolina restaurant inspections undergo changes

Restaurant owners in South Carolina face rising challenges with inspections after the state Department of Agriculture took over the state’s food safety responsibilities.

Lehken Smith is a restaurant food and management inspector who can be hired to coach businesses prior to inspections. She said she was frustrated with the state’s new inspection process. She said frequent visits and inspections often leave business owners confused.

“It’s a lot of different things that are now (new),” Smith said. “And restaurants and people and owners and all that stuff, they’re going through a tough time right now trying to, I guess, get all that stuff together.”

Smith said inspections under the DOA, rather than the Department of Health and Environmental Control, are more thorough.

“The only problem I’ve had so far with them, is that they come in, they assess things, and they tell you what was wrong, but they don’t tell you any (details),” Smith said. “When they come back, the problem is, that there’s still stuff wrong.”

Retail food safety officers visit twice within two weeks and issue a grade based on their findings that must be posted in a visible place. They return a month later to check progress. Smith said the inspection process often leaves restaurants dealing with more issues on follow up visits.

“They’re not really assessing everything at one time like they could be. They come in and want to nitpick,” Smith said. “Why didn’t you just address this the first time when you were here?”

Sandra Craig, director of retail food safety and compliance at the DOA, said the agency hired several more employees since the inspections moved out of DHEC, in part because the number of restaurants has kept increasing. That helps keep annual inspections current. And she said inspections are unannounced for good reason.

“Honestly, I could send them an engraved invitation and you (would) find plenty of issues whether they know you’re in the neighborhood or not,” Craig said. “An inspection is a snapshot in time.”

Craig said retail food safety officers prioritize correcting major issues on the spot. Facilities are revisited within 10 days if the business had priority violations.

Autumn Ashley, manager at Pawleys Front Porch in Columbia, said the recent inspection at her restaurant felt more in-depth.

“It was very … it was more in depth, for sure,” Ashley said. “And it took, like, probably double the time.”

Ashley said she supports the focus on safety but said there were a few random things in grading that she wasn’t aware of.

“There was a light bulb out in the kitchen, and they took points off for that,” she said. “There’s like a tile missing from the ceiling outside and we got points off.”

She said letter grades can be misleading to the public.

“The difference between a 80 and an 89 is actually pretty significant,” Ashley said. “I wish that was clearer.”

The public can use the state’s online food grade site to view three years of inspection history before deciding where to eat.

“We encourage people to look at inspection histories to base their dining preferences on good history,” she said.

Craig said the goal remains to help restaurants build a strong food safety culture.