Quote:
Originally Posted by stylinexpat
Would be nice if this city would one day implement health inspectors to go around the restaurants to check on cleanliness,hygiene and a bunch of other stuff.
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The modern restaurant evolved directly from the street vendor and the concept that more customers = more money. At first they sold a pretty basic fare like potato soup to poor people. It wasn't special and the rich of course had nothing to do with it but the vendors discovered that if they maybe added some salt or a carrot or served a different meal then they might make a few cents less per sale but that they'd bring more customers. Capitalistic competition. The ones who succeeded made enough money to open their own restaurants. On the other side of that coin, vendor X may use gutter water to make his soup while vendor Y uses clean water. Suddenly a bunch of vendor X's customers don't come back because they were made sick or killed by his food. Vendor X, humiliated and unable to keep in business because of his new reputation, is forced to either close shop or change how he does the dishes and try to save face. Either way he no longer poses a problem. When there are simply regulations in place or health inspectors coming around you can bet that vendor X will do what he has to to meet regulations but not exceed them since he has no big incentive to. With regulations in place many people assume that all existing places are safe to eat and don't consider that their food may be better elsewhere. Without them people are forced to look out for themselves. It's kind of like the gas price regulations where the station owner can't severely undercut the price of his neighbor's gas due to regulations, if he can afford to sell cheaper gas then he should be rewarded for it with more business. Street vendors receive more business for better tasting food and on the other front are rejected by the public if their customers all get sick.
Yes I agree that health regulations are necessary in most places today because most people refuse to take responsibility of their own safety. The history lesson just begs the question, how free is the food we eat? Something to think about.