From State inspection to county inspection

Remember the State inspection that I had back in November? Well, there is another inspection to go through following that, the county inspection! I just had my first one about a month ago. After surviving the unending and nerve wracking State inspection, I was naturally nervous. I don’t perform well under pressure and can get easily distracted. I didn’t really know what to expect, how long it was going to take, if I’d fail, if it was going to be just having to verbally explain my steps or if they’d want to observe me in production like they did during the State inspection, or what.

For some reason, I thought that the county inspection had to be done before starting to do any production. But apparently, it is done some time when you start operating.

Remember from way back when, when I received the plan check report/correction letter requirements? One of the steps that I was required to complete was to obtain a PFR (Processed Food Registration), which was obtained after that unending State inspection. This is required if doing wholesale food business. I knew that wholesale would be a huge leap if trying to take that route from the beginning, but I knew that I wanted to go in that direction, so that’s what I filled out on my shared food facility application, which was followed by a correction letter stating that a PFR was needed if I’m going to be doing wholesale. Complicating enough? Sometimes I do wonder if I should have waited before I added “wholesale” to my application, especially right now with everything going on and my entire business plans being thrown off and having to be completely revised.

Before I share about what went on during the recent county inspection that I survived, I wanted break things down from getting to that State inspection to the more recent step of getting to the county inspection. It may not be exactly the same steps and experience for every new business, but this is what I went through. 

Hopefully, this post helps someone out there because I know that it can be extremely confusing and easy to get frustrated at times when trying to prepare everything just to get started. When I was going through all this, I wished that there was somebody to hold my hand and break everything down when I was having my WTF moments. A lot of the times, I didn’t know what I had to do first. I didn’t understand why I had to obtain a PFR and others didn’t. I wanted to know how to best prepare for inspections. I had so many questions. Well, this is how it went down for Baked by A.K., starting from when I got the notice that a PFR needed to be obtained in order to move forward. I had no idea what a PFR even was.

1. Received a Plan Check Report, with a list of additional things required, including a PFR
2. Filled out a PFR application and paid the $448 fee (to be renewed every year).
3. Waited for a call to schedule an appointment for a State inspection.
   • Waited and waited… it’s stated that it takes approximately six to eight weeks to hear back. So I patiently waited until then, and then started emailing and calling periodically when I heard nothing. If I didn’t do that, I think I’d still be waiting right now lol.
4. After more waiting and back and forth calls and emails, they finally got back to me to finally schedule an appointment for the State inspection
5. The grueling six and a half hour State inspection finally happened in November of last year
6. I was given a list of things to obtain and correct.
7. I go through the check list and get everything up to State requirements and turn it in.
8. I wait some more
9. …..and some more
10. Months later, I finally receive a PFR certificate in the mail. Yay!
11. I contact OCHCA, submit a copy of the PFR, along with some other things from that list (sample label, additional info about production, nutritional label (exemption), etc.
12. OCHCA approves my Shared Food Facility application. Yay!
13. However, it is stated “you are not permitted to produce any foods at the facility until you receive your health permit”.
14. I stopped by OCHCA once again, filled out a health permit application and paid the annual fee of $263.
15. Weeks later, my health permit arrives in the mail. Yay!

At this point, I was thinking that the next step was going to be to schedule an appointment for the county inspection. But as I mentioned, I was told that I can officially start using the facility. Yay! And I found out that the county inspection will happen as I start.

I had plans to get started by selling at the local farmers’ markets first. I hadn’t applied to any yet because it seems that they don’t take applications unless the business had a health permit first. So after I had gotten the health permit, I was ready to start applying.

I contacted Marjan (owner of the incubator kitchen) to schedule an appointment to go over some things, get some guidance, and to make a deposit since I was finally ready to start.

And then……….bam! As the outbreak of COVID-19 was starting to get more serious, the whole world was starting to shut down. My business plans had to be temporarily put on hold. The entire spring season was spent quarantined and being too paranoid to step foot out. But it gave me some time to do some behind the scenes work, mostly more research and virtual networking.

The plans I had to carry out had to be revised, as I’m sure every other business had to with theirs. I considered possibly having pickup curbside and delivery options and leaned more towards online sales. I didn’t enter the kitchen again until the near of summer. I had mixed feelings about how safe I felt. But I also felt the need to start making my way out there, slowly and cautiously. 

The first day back in the kitchen was a testing day, to test items out in bigger batches than I’ve previously made. I didn’t want to be in a predicament where I needed to have orders ready (in bigger bulk) only to find out that simply multiplying the exact measurements may or may not always work. Maybe some things would need to be adjusted. And it happened to be a coincidence that I got a call the same day from OCHCA wanting to schedule an appointment for an inspection.

I lost sleep the night before the day of my inspection. Nerves and anxiety got the best of me. I didn’t even start having business yet, but I wanted to get it over with. I continued testing of the items in bigger batches. I didn’t even have business yet, but baking to test was what I did during the inspection, for the inspector to observe my steps.

 “You have nothing to worry about. She’s wonderful!” Marjan (the owner) said when I mentioned how nervous I was.

Come inspection day, I arrived a few minutes earlier so that I had some time to set up my station before the inspector arrived. I didn’t want to overcomplicate things and decided to bulk test just one item. With the added anxiety, even the tasks I can do with my eyes closed could have easily distracted me or thrown me off. The one item that i decided to make that day was vegan tahini banana bread. 

I had the oven preheating and was scaling out my ingredients when the inspector made her way in. Show time!

She introduced herself and proceeded to study my ingredients, making sure that everything was labeled, asked me to walk her through where my items are stored (dry storage, cooler, freezer), and again, checked to see that everything was labeled correctly and stored properly.

My OCD about handwashing really shined during this inspection and was recognized. I pretty much wash my hands after anything (it’s just a personal peeve of mine to have unwashed hands after touching anything, even before the pandemic paranoia). I proceeded to scale and mix the batter for the banana bread as she observed. As with the State inspection, how the dishwashing area is used is carefully monitored. She checked to see that I was using the correct temperatures for each compartment. For the sanitizing compartment, she had a test strip to make sure the pH level was on par.

We proceeded to go over how items were going to be stored, packaged, transported after baking She asked for copies of: sample labels, Servsafe, and PFR.

I honestly thought that she was going to linger around and ask me 500 more questions. I was starting to wonder if I should have had more things to prepare while I had the kitchen by the hour. BUT~~~ it turned out that, that was the end of the inspection that I had lost sleep over! Compared to the unending State inspection, this was seriously a walk in the park! I exhaled and was glad that it was over and that I survived through it.