The violations that cost almost nothing to fix and get written up anyway

Some violations need a contractor. These do not. They are habits, and they get cited constantly.

Bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat food

Ready-to-eat food should not be handled with bare hands. It is a critical violation, it starts at five points, and it is trivially observable — an inspector watching your line for ninety seconds will see it or will not.

The fix is gloves, tongs, deli tissue, or a utensil, consistently, on everything that will not be cooked again. The garnish. The bread. The sandwich build. The ice.

The failure mode is not ignorance. Everyone knows. It is that the tongs are across the station and the ticket is up, so a hand is faster. Put the tool where the hand would go.

The hand sink with something in front of it

A hand washing sink has to be accessible, stocked and used for hand washing.

Blocked hand sinks are cited constantly, and they are never blocked deliberately. A case of produce lands there during a delivery because it is the only flat surface, and it stays for the shift.

Same with the sink used to fill buckets, or as somewhere to rest a sheet pan. If it is being used for anything other than hands, it is not really a hand sink any more, and that is visible.

Soap and single-use towels have to be there. Check them at open, not when someone needs them.

Food left uncovered

Keep food covered until it is served. Cheap, obvious, and one of the most commonly cited things in the city.

The usual culprit is prep that got interrupted. Something came out, the phone rang, and it stayed out. Then it went into the walk-in uncovered because everyone was busy.

Storage that invites everything else

Two habits, both free:

• Six inches up and off the wall. It is not decorative. It exists so that a floor can be cleaned and a flashlight can reach, and anything sitting directly on the floor against a wall is a pest highway.
• Raw below ready-to-eat. Raw poultry does not go above salad mix. Ever. If your walk-in shelving forces the wrong order, the shelving is the problem.

Cutting boards and slicers

A deeply grooved cutting board cannot be sanitised, because the grooves hold what the cloth cannot reach. Repair or replace them.

Food contact surfaces get cleaned and sanitised after each use, and caked-on residue removed. The slicer is where this is most often skipped and most easily seen.

Why bother with two-point violations

Because they accumulate, and because the threshold is thirteen.

Six general violations at two points each is twelve. Add one temperature finding at seven and you are at nineteen — a B, a re-inspection, and a card in the window — and every one of the six was free to prevent.

The cheap points are not cheap when they are the difference between an A and a return visit.