Diners in Kanawha County, West Virginia will soon be able to check their mobile phones for restaurant inspections.

Dr. Rahul Gupta, executive director of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, told The Charleston Gazette he is developing a mobile application featuring inspections for all restaurants in the county.

He secured funding for the application three years ago, he said, when presenting the idea to the state Legislature. The idea can get off the ground with renewed interest in reforming the county's health inspections, he said.

Gupta also presented the proposed changes to the county's health inspections, modeled after Albany County, N.Y.

Beginning in July, Albany County will require restaurants to post a sign near the front of the entrance explaining the establishment's sanitary inspection results. The sign will indicate Excellent Compliance, Good Compliance or Fair Compliance with the county's health code. Restaurants that received unsatisfactory ratings will be shut down and re-inspected within days.

RiverStone Health in Montana was criticized last month when it raised concerns about a man who wanted to make Christmas dinner in his family’s kitchen and deliver the meals to shut-ins.

Health officials say they were only doing their job.

“Let’s imagine the unimaginable,” said RiverStone Health CEO John Felton. “Suppose 35 people got salmonella. What would the question of RiverStone Health have been at that point? We would not have been the Grinch who stole Christmas. We would have been the folks who allowed 35 people to get sick because we didn’t execute our responsibility.”

RiverStone objected to Cody Walter, owner of Delivery 2u, using private kitchens to prepare and distribute food. RiverStone provided Walter with information on food safety. They also identified a number of commercial kitchens so the holiday meals could be prepared in a facility equipped to safely store and prepare the food and milk donations he was receiving.

Walter said he was “shut down” and suggested the Grinch had stolen Christmas.
Public sentiment overwhelmingly sided with Walter.

“What needs to be clear is that we don’t have any interest whatsoever in preventing churches, nonprofit organizations and others from doing the good they do in the community,” Felton said. “Our compelling interest is to protect the safety and health of the public. What we don’t want is to have a bunch of people get sick because we didn’t provide the information they need.”

RiverStone Health employs nine registered sanitarians, six of whom are involved in food inspections. In fiscal year 2011, they conducted 1,750 unannounced inspections in 1,000 licensed establishments. The number of inspections does not include temporary events such as Christmas Stroll, Saturday Live and the Strawberry Festival.

“Cody Walter was doing a good thing,” Felton said. “If we would have had advanced notice we could have worked closely with him. We don’t want to discourage people from doing those types of things. He seems like a good-hearted guy, but there is a huge difference between cooking for five people and cooking for 50 and then delivering it.”

Walter said he understands now that RiverStone Health was only trying to protect him as well as those to whom he would deliver meals. “There are no hard feelings. They were only doing what they should be doing,” he said. “They are there for a reason.”

The New York City Council will announce Wednesday that nearly 1,000 restaurant operators have responded, after only two weeks, to a Web survey seeking their views about the city health department’s new letter-grading system for food safety.

As of Tuesday, 965 responses had been submitted — a sign “that we’ve hit a nerve,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker. “We’re getting surveys from every borough, and from very diverse neighborhoods.”

Opinions expressed in the responses will be revealed in Council hearings scheduled for late February or early March. Responding to what the speaker said was “a wave of complaints” about letter grading, the Council posted a questionnaire on its Web site (www.council.nyc.gov) asking the city’s 24,000 restaurateurs to share information about their experiences with inspectors and administrative tribunals, and the cost of fines and inspection consultants.

Susan Craig, a department spokeswoman, said a survey last summer showed that 90 percent of New Yorkers approved of letter grading, and questioned the methodology and the validity of the Council questionnaire, which asks for but does not require the names of respondents. “The survey has no method of confirming that a participant is actually a restaurant, nor does it ensure that an entrant fills out only one submission,” Ms. Craig said. “The results — good or bad — will have negligible value.”

But Zoe Tobin, a Council spokeswoman, responded that “there is a vetting system in place” that checks for duplication and fraud. “We felt that anonymity was important to encourage candid responses,” she said.

A survey response rate of 4.2 per cent sorta sucks and isn’t representative of much.

Last May, it was reported that 195 of the 580 people served Easter Brunch at Luciano's Cotton Club in Worcester, Mass. were struck by norovirus contracted from a sick employee, and the incident was chronicled on Yelp and a food safety site called barfblog.com.

“I would really drive home the point that they had a problem, investigated to determine what it is, and outlined a plan for what we're going to do from now on,” said Gregory Charland, founder and chief executive officer of Charland Technology, a Hubbardston-based company offering a wide range of technology services. “Organizations should use problems like that to really do some soul searching and figure out how and why this happened. The overriding concept to underline is that they are never going to have their name in the news about this again.”

(Hint, and it’s in the blog post: don’t let sick employees work, even at an Easter buffet).

Alex Barbosa, the restaurant's manager, declined comment.

That’s one anecdote in a story about on-line reviewing, which some love and some hate.

Alec Lopez dislikes consumer-driven review websites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and UrbanSpoon.

The owner of Armsby Abey in Worcester, Mass. said, “I don't read reviews often,” Mr. Lopez said. “I hate Yelp because it's an unanswered forum for people to bitch. I feel like it's a green light to voice your opinion without consequences.”

Worcester native Andrew Chandler, a 29-year-old medical student at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, had an unpleasant dining experience at Armsby Abbey, and chronicled it on Yelp.

“I was really sad to have done it, but I think that when a place isn't responsive or accommodating, people should know about it. I was hoping Armsby Abbey would read it and respond. I think it goes a long way if a manager explains what the circumstances were, and how they'll prevent the problem from happening again. Today, online reviews can make or break a customer's decision.”

In September, Harvard Business School professor Michael Luca released research that found a one-star rating increase on Yelp directly led to a 5 percent to 9 percent boost in revenue for independent restaurants, with comparable projections for independents in other industries. Despite the growing influence of Yelp and similar websites, business owners like Mr. Lopez continue to ignore — or worse, incorrectly address — negative feedback when it comes in the form of an online review.

With 61 million monthly visitors and 22 million reviews online by the end of the third quarter last year, Yelp is the most popular online review destination for everything from dentists to dieticians. Yelp's popularity is proof that consumers trust reviews written by the average Joe, and enjoy contributing their own 2 cents.

Wilson Wang, chef and owner of Baba Sushi in Worcester, said he checks online reviews of his restaurant “all the time,” monitoring what diners like — and don't like.

Mr. Wang, whose customers' reviews currently rank Baba Sushi 4.5 out of 5 stars on Yelp.com, said he doesn't respond personally to people's comments but rather sees such reviews “as a mirror” to reveal what could be done better. “We are on the high level and we are really proud,” he said last week.

Yelp and websites like it open the door for independent businesses with limited marketing budgets, giving them an opportunity to advertise through old-fashioned word of mouth in a high-tech world. They offer a safety net to consumers who, with a few keystrokes, can be reassured that trying something new — rather than falling back on the reliability of a chain — won't be a waste of their money.

“Every time I've given a negative review and gotten some sort of constructive, non-judgmental response, I've made it a point to go back to whatever business it was and give them a clean slate,” said Amy Jamieson, a 42-year-old Yelp user and homemaker from Worcester. “If they're willing to try again, so am I.”