Ken’s Donuts on Guadalupe Street reopened on March 10 after closing two days earlier for failing multiple health inspections.

The restaurant had received three failing scores on separate inspections since November. It then received a passing score of 79 on March 9, making it compliant with city health policy and subject to a follow-up inspection in the next month and a half. 

Restaurants are graded on a scale of 1 to 100, with a passing score of 70. Nasir Habib, owner of Ken’s Donuts, said the failing grades were because of extenuating circumstances in the restaurant’s health code. 

“We failed a couple times … because of some [irregular] circumstances, but before we even failed it, we already had [a score] between 80 and 90,” Habib said. 

Vincent Delisi, assistant division manager in Environmental Health Services for Austin said receiving three failing scores is uncommon.

“These inspections indicate a significant decrease in oversight of a part of management,” Delisi said.  

Delisi said it’s hard to tell from one inspection report what the overall and long-term conditions are of an establishment and that Ken’s Donuts had previously passed multiple health inspections. 

“An inspection is a snapshot of the conditions at the time of inspection,” Delisi said. “They did score a 90 on May 28 of last year. Prior to that they had an 86, and prior to that they had a 70, and they had an 86 before that. The last three to four inspections [should be looked at] as an average, as opposed to looking at any one
particular score.”

Radio-television-film sophomore Lacie Block said she regularly frequented Ken’s Donuts and still does.

“I went about once a week, usually on late nights,” Block said. “I actually went just last night. It’s hard to keep me away from donuts, especially since I live so close to the shop.”

Block said she spotted a bug during one of her visits to the shop.

“Before they closed, I was in the shop getting donuts, and I pointed out a large bug crawling on some of the croissants in the display case by the register,” Block said. “The cashier quickly got someone to dump out the tray, but I assumed it was only because I had seen it.” 

Habib said Ken’s Donuts has complied with all inspection requests.

“We reopened and corrected everything that was supposed to be corrected,” Habib said. “We are fully operational. We have everything [working].”