Newton County restaurant fails inspection for second time

COVINGTON, Ga. — A Newton County Mexican restaurant is making changes after health officials gave it two consecutive failing grades upon inspection.
 
The owner of Pacho's Mexican Grill told Channel 2's Carol Sbarge he has had the business on Highway 278 for 10 years.
 
He admits he needed to make some changes after two unsatisfactory health inspections.
 
Pacho's is known for serving freshly made food each day, but problems with equipment and not following all the proper procedures caused the Covington restaurant to fail inspections twice this month, with a 56 and then a 51.
 
"One of our coolers for our luck was at 45 degrees temperature, which means it wasn't working properly," said restaurant owner Tony Rosas.
 
Violations include the manager not performing duties as required, inspectors observed employees touching raw chicken and then touching ready to eat vegetables without changing gloves, potentially hazardous foods not maintained at 41 degrees or below in a cooler and some hot foods not held hot enough.
 
Sbarge said she has gone into a number of restaurants that failed their inspection then didn't put up the failing score, but the owner told her he put up the 51 right away because he said he wanted to be upfront with his customers
 
"Everything on there you read on the report, everything was corrected on site," Rosas told Sbarge as he showed her in the kitchen where he had a repair person fix the cooler.
 
He said he also is making sure there's a checklist of proper procedures for employees to follow daily.
 
"I even downloaded sheets from the Internet where, you know, now we started jotting all that stuff down, temperatures at what time we're putting them away, check every hour," Rosas said.

WSBTV