Michelle Volkmann, Sun Staff Writer
Jun 12, 2005
Wash your hands. Wash your hands.
And don’t forget to wash your hands.
That message echoed throughout kitchens of Yuma restaurants last week as owners and managers take the hepatitis A incident at Chile Pepper as an opportunity to review health code rules with their employees.

“The hardest thing is your employees. One person can blow it. That’s why you make sure your employees think about food safety every day,” said Jeffrey Lee, manager of the Mad Greek Restaurant. “It’s constant nagging and education.”
Last week, Yuma County health officials announced a food service worker at Chile Pepper was infected with hepatitis A. The infection did not originate at the restaurant, the health department said, and the woman contracted the infection from an undetermined location.
The Sun contacted six local restaurant owners to find out what they do to make sure that the food they serve is safe for patrons. The answers varied slightly.
But the number one answer was having employees repeatedly wash their hands.
“The most important thing is to keep your hands clean at all times,” Mark Santos, owner of Bella Vita Restaurant, said. “It protects you and the customer.”
General guidelines include clean fingernails, clean aprons, short hair or pulling it back and cleaning off the bottom of the shoes, so employees don’t track any parasites. This is a concern in a farming community, like Yuma, Santos said.
“People forget about that all the time,” he said.
Besides those basic rules, it is really not hard, Santos said.
“It’s a lot of common sense. There is a lot of common sense in what you are doing,” he said.
Denise Tuiasosopo, manager of Alfie’s Sandwich Company, said the key is wearing gloves.
“Gloves and deep cleaning every day,” she said. “And go by the book they give you. Anything you can do to better protect your customers.”
It also helps that the owner, Karen Nance, is one of those “super clean people who is kind of compulsive about it,” Tuiasosopo said.
“She is very picky,” she said. The two are sisters.
The owner of River City Grill, Nan Bain, agreed it is easier to manage cleanliness when the staff or restaurant is small. That’s why fast food restaurants with a high volume of customers are more likely to have health-code violations, she said.
“When they are serving 1,000 per day there are more chances for it to happen,” Bain said. “When you have a small restaurant, it is easier to keep a handle on it.”
At her restaurants there are “bleach buckets everywhere” so employees can use them to wipe down surfaces and prevent cross contamination.
“I’m there all the time so I can see that they are (washing their hands),” Bain said. “I can see that they are taking the right precautions.”
There is a lot of trust between the owner and the employees, hoping that they are following the rules.
“You can’t follow your employees into the bathroom,” Bain said.
At Mr. G’s, nine surveillance cameras are in the kitchen so that the owner, John Gutierrez, can watch his workers.
“We are constantly watching them,” he said. “The public is not aware of this. We have to make sure that they are doing their job the way we tell them to.”
Gutierrez, who also owns Chile Pepper and La Casa Gutierrez, said fast food restaurants aren’t more prone to have sanitation problems. Gutierrez said he would rather have his employees be clean and slower than fast and unsafe.
“If we are busy or not it has to be handled a certain way. We stress this constantly,” he said.
A manager must have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to cleanliness, said Richard Hopkins, owner of Brown Bag Burger.
“I pretty much don’t tolerate anyone being dirty. If they are dirty, then I send them home,” Hopkins said.
Restaurant owners said the public attention put on Chile Pepper last week is a nightmare.
“It’s every restaurant’s nightmare to have this happen,” Bain said. “Many aren’t fully able to recover from that type of damage. Anything like this affects everyone and everyone is reminded it can happen to you.”
Santos said he ate at Chile Pepper for breakfast last week and is encouraging his employees to eat there too.
“I’m supporting them. It’s not their fault,” he said. “This is wake-up call to follow through every single day to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
In the 54 years Gutierrez has been in the restaurant business, he has never had a problem before.
“I’m not saying it can’t or won’t happen again,” he said. “It can happen to anyone. But we have to do our best to make sure it doesn’t happen.”