N.Y. eateries are losing the rat race
NEW YORK — A major owner of Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell franchises saw a majority of its New York City restaurants shut down Thursday as the fallout continued from a video showing rats overrunning one of its Manhattan eateries.
The city’s health department revealed that three more restaurants owned by the ADF Cos., of Fairfield, N.J., were closed by inspectors this week because of unsanitary conditions. Two, both in Queens, were found to be infested with mice.
The new closures prompted swift action by fast-food giant Yum Brands Inc., parent of the KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut chains. Late Wednesday it announced the pre-emptive closing of 10 additional New York restaurants operated by ADF. It said they would remain shuttered until city inspectors gave them a clean bill of health.
Shares of Yum Brands slid 84 cents, or 1.4 percent, to close at $57.10 on the New York Stock Exchange.
“We will not compromise on our food and restaurant quality,” Yum Brands executive Emil Brolick said in a written statement.
ADF President Don Harty apologized to customers for the problems.
“We are embarrassed by the situation and stress that certain restaurants did not meet the very high standards that we set for ourselves,” he said in a statement.
The decade-old company owns more than 350 fast-food restaurants in several states and is among the nation’s largest operators of Pizza Huts.
As of Thursday afternoon, eight of its 22 New York restaurants had passed an inspection and were allowed to remain open. ADF spokeswoman Marissa Smith said it was unclear how soon the others might reopen.
City inspectors put the company in their cross hairs last week, when a TV cameraman peering through the windows of a KFC/Taco Bell in Greenwich Village at 2:30 a.m. recorded a nauseating number of rats skittering across the floor and climbing on tables and countertops.
The video, which circulated on the Internet, also brought shame on the city for giving a passing grade to the eatery during an inspection just a day earlier.
A follow-up inspection resulted in the restaurant’s immediate closure.
Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said this week that the city’s failure to immediately shut the restaurant was unacceptable, and he removed the inspector who conducted the initial review from field duty. He also promised that other inspectors could expect a thorough analysis of their work.
Several restaurant owners complained they had been given excessively punitive inspections in the scandal’s wake.
“After what happened in Manhattan, now they are cracking down on every restaurant,” said Ted Vlamis, whose Vegas Diner in Brooklyn failed an inspection and was ordered closed by the Department of Health on Wednesday.
In 25 years of operation, Vlamis said, the restaurant had never been judged so harshly. This week’s inspection, he said, resulted in seven times as many violation points as the diner received in its last evaluation a year ago — all for minor infractions.