Canberra Cafe Societea fined over mess and selling old food
A once-thriving Canberra cafe was filthy, sold out of date food, and had warm fridges after an IT worker took it over, a court has heard.
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A once-thriving Canberra cafe became filthy, started selling out-of-date food and had warm fridges within months of an IT worker taking the business over with nothing but an online “crash course” in food handling, a court has heard.
Magistrate James Stewart on Wednesday convicted and fined shell company Grace Logic $3000 over a series of breaches of the Food Act.
Defence lawyer James Maher said the company’s director Joseph Kwon, 48, of Watson, had never worked in hospitality and was relying on a staff of university students to keep the now-defunct Griffith cafe up to scratch when food inspectors came knocking.
“Clearly, generally it was unclean,” Mr Maher said.
“This is not a matter where it was infested.
“There was not a great deal of attention put to keeping it tidy.”
Kwon had only been running the cafe for 10 months when busted by inspectors, after taking a “bare minimum” online course in hospitality.
The cafe has since shut and the company is in a deep financial hole, and Kwon will have to lend money out of his own pocket to pay off the fine.
Mr Maher said the cafe was packed with customers during its busy summer months when inspectors showed up in January 2018, and that a delay in the authorities charging the company had caused Kwon stress.
The prosecution argued the company “may not have intended to harm anyone, but the failure to comply … shows at least a degree of recklessness”.
Mr Stewart said he accepted Kwon was “remorseful and contrite about his own failings”.
He said Kwon’s decision to shut the cafe meant he had to pay out the lease on the building, leading to “financial ruin for the company”.
“To say the business is floundering is an understatement,” he said.
He said the breaches of the law were “obvious” and that paying customers had a right to be served food that was prepared properly.
He said he might have handed out a heavier fine were it not for “the good fortune of causing no public illness”.