Ice cream parlour Sprinkles is fined £5,000 after customer receives live COCKROACH in their food
- Popular ice cream parlour Sprinkles Gelato has been fined £5,000 after a customer was served a live cockroach in their food
- Dessert-chain Sprinkles has restaurants dotted across the south coast of Britain
- An inspection showed that one of their parlours in Portsmouth had ‘cockroach activity present in areas where food was being prepared, handled and stored’
- The company admitted to five hygiene charges at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court
A popular ice cream parlour has been fined thousands of pounds after a customer was served a live cockroach in their food.
Sprinkles Gelato, a chain dessert restaurant which has stores across the south of Britain, was hit with a string of charges after the grim discovery.
Inspectors who visited the restaurant’s branch on Commercial Road, Portsmouth, found ‘significant cockroach activity present in areas where food was being prepared, handled and stored’.
Sprinkles, which boasts of serving ‘incredible’ Italian recipe gelato and ‘only the best ingredients’, was prosecuted by Portsmouth City Council and fined £5,000.
An ice cream parlour has been fined after a customer was served a live cockroach in their food
The store’s parent company Sprinkles Gelato 3 Limited, which is based in Portswood Road, Southampton, admitted five hygiene charges at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court.
They included failing to take steps to ‘protect food produced on the premises from any contamination likely to render the food unfit for human consumption, injurious to health or contaminated in such a way that it would be unreasonable to expect it to be consumed in that state’.
Another charge related to not disinfecting or cleaning serving areas, the cellar store equipment, chillers and freezers effectively or regularly enough.
The firm also failed to have enough hand washbasins in the right place. One hand basin in the rear preparation room was out of use and the one in the front of the store was dirty and obstructed by crockery.
Sprinkles also failed to have the right paperwork under the Food Safety Hygiene Regulations.
Photos from an environmental health inspection show how there weren’t enough washbasins
The firm was fined £5,000 with £100 compensation for the customer who was served a live cockroach in their food.
Sprinkles was also ordered to pay a £170 victim surcharge and £1,571.59 costs to the city council.
Cllr Dave Ashmore, Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change at Portsmouth City Council, said: ‘Poor hygiene standards pose a significant risk to public health.’