Why Porters’ Charlie’s Cafe joins five-star food safety ratings

A popular Mackay CBD cafe is the newest on the block to achieve five-stars in food safety. See the full list of rankings including how many businesses scored zero.

At any given moment a health and safety inspector can drop into a Mackay eatery and so when they finally did, it happened to be during rush hour.

“I think no matter what, when you get an inspection, you’re like, ‘Oh god, is everything done?’” Maria O’Reilly said.

With a decade of hospitality experience behind her, the Charlie’s Cafe manager said her “very strong” team had been striving to bump up their four-star Eat Safe rating to five.

Porters Mitre 10's Charlie's Cafe manager Maria O'Reilly. Picture: Heidi Petith

“(The inspector) said, ‘Oh I have to take your stars off you’ and we thought ‘We’ve dropped (a star)’ and then she said, ‘Because I have to give you five’. She left us hanging for a few,” Ms O’Reilly said with a laugh.

Five stars meant the cafe at Porters Mitre 10 Mackay City was an excellent performer in record keeping, procedures, cleanliness and sustainable food practices.

Ms Reilly, who grew up in Ireland and began working at the cafe in 2012, said the result was thanks to team effort, hard work and consistency.

And if the customer base was anything to go by, it is paying off.

“I believe (the cafe) is so popular because they do a lot of community work and it’s consistent,” Ms Reilly said.

“Pretty much, (the customers) don’t like when I change my menu.”

She said lasagne was a particular favourite as well as the other goodies which were all home-baked.

“I just want to thank all the local support that we have from all of our regular customers,” she said.

“Now that we’ve got five stars, it’s an awesome achievement.”

Of the 32 businesses Mackay Regional Council recently inspected, two were classified as five-star, four at four-star and 25 at three-star.

And one businesses was reported to have below standard safety ratings scoring a two-star rating meaning they had “very unclean premises” and “poor hygiene practices”.

Nil scored zero stars and need “major effort” to fix issues such as incorrect temperatures, uncleanliness and presence of pests and vermin.

Read the full list below

There are currently 649 Mackay restaurants with an eat safe overall rating with 97 per cent achieving a three-star rating or higher meaning they have a good or better level of compliance with food safety standards.

Nine have a two-star rating and five have a zero-star.

Only businesses with three-stars or higher are listed on the council website.

Food businesses may also not be listed below as disclosing health ratings is voluntary.

Food vendors may also not be listed if they have not paid their annual food licence fee or if the business has recently opened or changed owners and has not been audited yet.