What would we do if we didn’t have the government to save us from the evils of free coffee and donuts?

An anonymous customer complaint to the county brought health inspectors to the store, who determined its tradition of more than 15 years of offering coffee and doughnuts to customers violated food-handling regulations.

“We’ve been doing this since we bought the place 15 years ago and the previous owner was doing it, too,” said Randy Collins, 42, co-owner with his parents of B & B. “We simply weren’t aware we were causing a problem.”

Inspectors told Collins that unless he was willing to install stainless-steel sinks with hot and cold water and have a prep kitchen to handle the food, he was violating the law.

Wow. Thank God for those inspectors. I mean, sure for well over 15 years nothing has happened, but something might! I mean, they need a prep area to open that box of donuts. It’s the only safe way!

Years ago Wife wanted to start her own business. Being that I work in Geek Land, she wanted to make meals for geeks. Many of the geeks I worked with at the time were single and work was their life. Many couldn’t cook and lived off eating out or pre-made meals (e.g. TV dinner type stuff). Wife’s cooking is excellent, so her idea was to make batches of meals, put them into single-serving containers and freeze them. Make weekly deliveries to the geeks of food… then they just have to heat and eat and get delicious and nutritious “as close to home-cooked as they’ll get” meals. Great idea, right?

Wife looked into what it would take to make that happen. Once she saw all of the regulations required (e.g. we’d need 2 mop sinks… two) she gave up on the idea. She wanted to start small. She wanted to do this out of our home. She didn’t want to secure massive loans and property at the onset. She didn’t want to put the family well-being at too much risk in case it failed, but if it took off it would be able to build on its own. But it was just too much. According to the reams of codes and regulations, our home isn’t fit for making food for others… and neither is yours. You’d even be surprised to find out if you entertain dinner guests often enough that you’re in violation of this same code.

Yes. Let’s do all we can to encourage and enable entrepreneurship.