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FOOD POISONING

Charges filed after mass food poisoning

A café owner from Dalarna in central Sweden is facing criminal charges after 86 people were taken ill with food poisoning after eaten food prepared on her premises just a few days after inspectors had told her to close her shop.

Published: 12 December 2011 12:07 CET

Charges filed after mass food poisoning

”I was one of those who fell ill. I make no claims for myself, but I know others who had to be off work due to the illness,” said Lars Enoksson, business administrator for the municipality to local paper Dala-Demokraten.

According to the paper, at least 10 disgruntled customers have since reported the 27-year-old female café owner in hopes of getting compensation for the meals they had at her shop.

However, prior to the visit by the staff from the local authority, the café had been visited by the inspectors from the environmental health department, who carried out a check of the food served at the establishment.

The inspector found several serious flaws to the general cleanliness and food hygiene.

According to the report, the inspector was worried that there may be a serious risk of cross contamination between food groups.

Due to the risks, the café owner received a warning and was banned from handling food on the premises until she had carried out the changes demanded by the inspector.

Despite the order, the woman chose to continue running the café for another three days without having carried out any of the changes that the environmental health department had flagged.

According to the prosecutor, this makes the woman guilty of crimes against Swedish food laws as well.

The prosecutor has also argued that the crimes have been committed deliberately and that the owner should therefore be fined, the paper reported.

The 27-year-old woman has denied all allegations and since the incident has closed up shop.

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OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits.

SEE ALSO: What’s the tipping etiquette in Sweden?

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user).

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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