Frugals touts new procedures for shake safety, offers details on latest Tacoma inspection
A local burger chain that recently was approved to restart selling milkshakes following a deadly Listeria outbreak released a statement Monday after recent coverage of that and its October health inspection.
The News Tribune reported Oct. 29 that Frugals was cleared by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department in early October to resume its sales of milkshake, after getting rid of the machines previously used at the site and adhering to a slate of new procedures and requirements.
The company replaced the two machines with one relocated from its Auburn restaurant that tested negative for Listeria through a third-party laboratory, an inspector noted at the time.
Frugals financial manager Laurie Macarty on Monday told The News Tribune via email that it had fully complied with the health department’s requirements before returning to shake service “and implemented additional procedures to increase health and safety going forward, including creating a Shake Machine manual with step-by-step training guides and proper tools to be used.”
Machines contaminated with Listeria at the Tacoma Frugals, 10727 Pacific Ave. S, Tacoma were blamed for an outbreak earlier this year that sickened six people, three of whom died. The site had stopped milkshake production Aug. 8 as investigators examined samples, later determining all flavors of the milkshakes from the site were contaminated with the same Listeria strain.
Insufficient cleaning, lack of proper cleaning tools and a crack in one of the machine holding bins were among the issues blamed for the bacterial contamination.
Three customers filed lawsuits against the company as a result of the outbreak.
The health department’s shake-service approval report listed a range of new requirements for the restaurant, which Frugals offered more details about on Monday.
Macarty wrote that the site now requires “two individuals to clean the machine so that we have two sets of eyes on the machine, ensuring proper procedures are followed and a thorough cleaning is completed. We have sign off sheets for anyone being trained on cleaning the machines and a check off sheet that shows all steps are being completed.”
Managers are required to keep the records for a year, and Frugals has “also implemented a random inspection procedure, where our district managers are inspecting and watching shake machine cleaning at each of our stores at random times throughout each month,” she wrote.
In October, the health department again visited the restaurant for a separate site inspection and cited it for two red (critical) violations, and four blue (noncritical) violations. None of the violations were tied to the previous shake-machine issues, a health department representative previously told The News Tribune.
Macarty’s emailed statement also offered details on the Oct. 19 health inspection regarding the discovery of raw beef patties stored above containers of soft-serve mix on the site.
“The morning the health department came in for the inspection we had just received our meat order,” Macarty wrote.
“The delivery driver was new and had initially stacked the meat in the cooler. Between the time the driver stacked the meat and the health department arrived, approximately one hour later, no one had been in the walk-in cooler to correct the placement of the meat. If they had, the situation would have been corrected.”
Macarty added, “The health department rightly marked it a violation regardless of cause or duration, and it was remedied.”
Macarty said Frugals does everything it can to go “above and beyond what is required,” by inspection standards. “We do not expect to be given the trust of our community; we expect to earn it.”
“We pray every day for the customers and their families who were affected by the Listeria outbreak, We cannot change what happened and may never know all the details of how it occurred, but we will continue to learn and improve our procedures to ensure that it never happens again,” Macarty wrote.
This story was originally published October 31, 2023 at 10:00 AM.
