Most of Chicago’s food trucks have never faced the same type of surprise health inspections that restaurants often face, an analysis of city data by the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7 Chicago’s I-Team has found.
Though food trucks have been operating in Chicago for years and are increasingly popular, records show the Chicago Department of Public Health hasn’t subjected many of them to even a single unannounced visit — the kind of inspection that experts say are the most likely to detect potential food-safety problems.
Late last month, City Hall’s inspector general, Joseph Ferguson, issued a report that found the health department doesn’t inspect many restaurants as frequently as state law requires.
Food trucks — which the review by Ferguson’s office didn’t include — are even less likely than brick-and-mortar restaurants to get surprise visits from city inspectors, the Sun-Times and ABC7 found.
These “canvass inspections” — in which inspectors show up without warning while food is being served — account for more than half of health department visits to restaurants.
But they make up only about 10 percent of health inspections of the food trucks licensed to cook onboard in Chicago.
As a result, city records show, many food trucks face inspection only when they are first licensed, when their licenses are up for renewal or if they turn up at festivals. And those license inspections aren’t surprise visits. They are arranged with the owners in advance and don’t take place while food is being served.
The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Julie Morita, says there’s no reason for the public to be concerned.
Dr. Julie Morita, the city’s health commissioner. | Michael Maher/ABC7 Chicago
“We are confident in the food trucks right now,” Morita says. “Because of limited resources, we have to work diligently on prioritizing which food establishments get inspected more regularly.”
Ferguson found that the city would need many more inspectors to do all the checks that the law requires.
Asked about Sun-Times/ABC7 findings, Ferguson said, “To the extent you’re finding that not enough inspections are being done, that’s consistent with what we found with food establishments generally. The city is not meeting its own regulatory standards.”
State law dictates that all food establishments, including food trucks, have to be inspected more frequently if they are deemed to be at higher risk of having problems that could affect consumers.
Morita notes that many food trucks are categorized as “Risk 3,” the lowest level, so they don’t have to be inspected as often.
Yet even for food trucks that are considered “Risk 2” — that is, of medium concern — the health department often has conducted only license inspections and no canvass visits, the Sun-Times and ABC7 found.
Presented with that finding, health department spokesman Brian Richardson said changes will be made and will come quickly.
“To ensure additional safety, our inspection team will launch canvass inspections of Risk Level 2 food trucks beginning next month,” Richardson said, “with the goal of conducting at least one canvass inspection for each food truck within a two-year time frame.”
That would be far more often than city inspectors have been getting to them.
Risk 1 establishments — those deemed to be at the highest risk of food-safety problems — are supposed to be inspected twice a year. Those categorized as Risk 2 are due for inspection annually.
But the state has given the city of Chicago a waiver to do inspections only every other year for Risk 2 establishments, and the city also is allowed to count license inspections toward that goal.
Of the 34 Risk 1 or 2 food trucks that have been licensed by the city for at least two years, 20 have never been subjected to a canvass inspection, the Sun-Times/ABC7 analysis found.
Food truck owners say their cleanliness does get scrutinized, though, because they also face health inspections in suburbs where they do business. Gabriel Wiesen, president of the Illinois Food Truck Owners Association, says his Beaver Donuts truck has faced inspections this year in Evanston, Schaumburg, Naperville, Highland Park and other communities, in addition to Chicago.
“I would argue that food trucks are a very safe medium because we are inspected so often by multiple health departments in different municipalities and counties,” Wiesen says.
Chicago city records show Beaver Coffee & Donuts has been the subject of one canvass inspection since it went into business more than three years ago, which it passed.
City officials also act on complaints, and Beaver failed one such inspection, in June. Inspectors reported that, while preparing orders for customers, a Beaver employee also was observed handling cash, touching the truck’s door handles and grabbing a water hose on the ground “multiple times.” The truck was forced to shut down because of that “critical violation” and for not having running water, records show.
Another truck, The Slide Ride, went into business more than 3-1/2 years ago and hasn’t faced a surprise food inspection yet.
But, acting on a complaint that eating there had made someone sick, city inspectors visited The Slide Ride in October 2015 and shut down the truck, citing it for storing eight pounds of hamburgers at 85.6 degrees. Smaller quantities of bacon and cheese also were being stored at temperatures far above the legal threshold for storage of 40 degrees.
“I had two chicken sliders and one burger slider on Oct. 21 for lunch,” the complainant reported on Oct. 22, 2015. “That evening, I had dinner at home, and no one else was sick, so the Slide Ride is the only place I could have got it, and it was what was still coming up at 2 a.m. Sick all last night, missed work today and still sick as of 7 p.m. tonight . . . Have not been that sick in over 20 years.”
ABC7 recorded an employee of The Slide Ride touching food with bare hands while the truck was operating. That was one of five trucks whose employees were recorded by ABC7 using bare hands to touch food in downtown Chicago in recent weeks.
Wiesen, the food truck association president, said inspectors have told him that touching food with bare hands isn’t always against the rules.
But Richardson, the health department spokesman, said gloves, tongs, deli paper or other barriers must be used to handle food.
“You are not permitted to touch ready-to-eat foods with bare hands,” Richardson said. “If those violations are occurring, we encourage residents to report to 311.”
The Slide Ride’s owner declined to comment on the failed inspection or the employee seen touching food bare-handed, saying she has decided to no longer operate her truck due to recent, stepped-up enforcement of the city’s 2012 food truck ordinance.
Food trucks parked on Clark Street between Monroe Street and Adams Street at lunch hour. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times
That ordinance was proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and approved by the City Council in October 2012. Before then, cooking wasn’t allowed on food trucks, even though it already was in many other cities. Instead, food trucks here could serve only prepackaged items.
The same ordinance allowing food to be prepared on the trucks also established “mobile food vehicle stands” across the city and set a limit of no more than two hours at a time for food trucks to operate from the same spot.
But a Sun-Times/ABC7 investigation in August found that the two-hour rule was routinely flouted and rarely enforced. After those reports, Emanuel ordered a crackdown, and dozens of food trucks have been cited for violations since then.
On Wednesday, Ald. Proco Joe Moreno (1st) proposed an ordinance that would relax those restrictions, letting food trucks operate in the same place for six hours. The mayor said he hasn’t taken a position on the proposal.
Food truck owners lost a court fight last week to throw out another city restriction, which bars them from doing business within 200 feet of restaurants, with a Cook County judge ruling against them Dec. 5.
Owners say other cities don’t regulate food trucks so heavily and that it’s difficult for their businesses to survive.
In Los Angeles County — renowned for its vast array of food trucks — officials found in 2014 that about 40 percent of food trucks and carts hadn’t been inspected in the previous three years. This past May, the Los Angeles Times reported that food trucks there were three times more likely to fail inspections and to be forced to close than regular restaurants.
Contributing: Data Reporting Lab editor Darnell Little, Ann Pistone and Jason Knowles of ABC7 Chicago.
