SYCAMORE TOWNSHIP, Ohio – One of the region’s fastest-growing breweries is also leading the way in restaurant code violations.

March First Brewing has had 26 violations at its Sycamore Township location this year — 23 of them since July 23. It’s one of five brewery locations with at least 10 violations this year, according to the WCPO 9 I-Team’s review of online food inspection reports in southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky.

March First spokesman Josh Engel said a regional manager is working with the Hamilton County Health Department to address inspectors’ concerns.

“We also just hired a new experienced chef who will take care of all operations, including safety and record keeping,” Engel added.

The I-Team has been tracking restaurant and brewery violations for more than a decade. They rarely raise concerns for local health officials. But due to increased competition and changing consumer tastes, breweries have also expanded their restaurant operations in recent years.

“People come in and drink beer and then suddenly they decide they should eat something,” says Jon Newberry, president of Wiedemann Brewery in St. Bernard. “And you better offer them something to eat, otherwise they’ll go somewhere else to get more food and drink beer.”

Ray Pfeffer

Newberry is a former journalist who, while covering beer, learned that the Wiedemann trademark had lapsed. So he hired an attorney to claim the trademark and built a business around it. Newberry, a St. Bernard resident, found a home for his business in a vacant funeral home, which he filled with memorabilia, live music and German-inspired dishes like Goetta Tots and the Wiedie Schnitzel Sandwich.

“It’s a perfect addition to the beer business and the restaurant,” Newberry said. “It’s a good marketing tool for Wiedemann beer.”

Newberry sees big differences between restaurants and breweries. However, he adds that both rely on cleanliness.

“If you cook a good burger and keep everything clean, that’s just continuous maintenance,” Newberry said. “It’s the same with a brewery. Brewing beer is 90 percent about keeping everything clean. The difference with beer is, if you don’t keep the equipment clean, you end up with thousands of gallons of bad beer.”

There have been two violations against Wiedemann so far in 2024.

“I think we’re maybe on our second or third inspector,” he said. “They usually find a few things that they bring to our attention (but) we get along well with the inspector.”

March First, on the other hand, has two of the five locations with 10 or more violations in 2024. FigLeaf Brewing Co. in Middletown, which was acquired by March First in 2019, had 15 violations in May and June, including one critical violation for not having a food safety worker certified by the state. There were no more violations after June 6.

“We are pleased with our performance at FigLeaf and always strive to offer the best products and services there and at all our locations,” said Engel.

Other top five finishers were:

• Sonder Tap House in West Chester with 15 violations, six of them critical.
• VooDoo Brewing in West Chester with 13 violations, four of them serious.
• Braxton Brewing at CVG Airport with ten violations, three of them critical.

In Sycamore Township, March First has had 23 violations since July 23, when Hamilton County inspectors responded to a July 19 complaint about “expired food.”
They found “expired and discolored (dark spots/mold?) food on the ham” in a walk-in cooler and sour cream in a bloated container that measured 17 degrees Celsius. March First was instructed to discard all food above 10 degrees Celsius and prepare for a follow-up inspection.

On August 15, inspectors found “expired sausage in food preparation refrigerators” and temperature violations on pizza sauce and macaroni and cheese in “warming containers.”

This led to a third inspection, where inspectors found “sauces and macaroni and cheese not brought to temperature in the (required) time. Ensure they are heated to 165°F within 2 hours.” They also found “a large number of fruit flies at both bar locations.”

Health inspectors monitor food temperatures closely because food that reaches temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees can become infected with bacteria, which public health experts call a “danger zone.”

When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) investigated the causes of foodborne illness in 2023, they found that 10% of cases were due to improper refrigeration of hot food in restaurants. In 6% of cases, this happened because restaurants prepared their food at the wrong time and temperature.

The WCPO 9 I-Team took a deep dive into the issue in January, finding that in 2023, 24% of local restaurants received at least one complaint related to food temperature, up from 37% in 2019.