It had come in as a referral from the Business Rates section. A query on an address that didn’t match any registered food businesses.
Either the system was wrong, or someone had been operating on Merchant Street for some indeterminate period, and nobody had thought to tell the Council about it.
Pauline had asked for the file. It wasn’t much of one - three pages. The first page was the referral. The second page was a note saying the address had been flagged for inspection five years ago. But that inspection had never been completed due to staffing. The third page was a note from five years before that saying the address had been flagged for inspection. Also never been completed, again due to staffing.
The bus stop was a hundred yards from the premises, and she still managed to walk past it once before she found it. Wedged between a key cutter and a shop that sold - as far as she could tell - exclusively lamps. There was a lovely, green painted sign. A chalkboard below it with the week’s cheeses written in careful chalk capitals.
There were some hanging baskets. Must have been recently watered. They dripped onto the pavement.
She took a photograph of the store front. She didn’t take a photo of the baskets.
Inside, a marble counter ran most of the length of the room. There were three chillers, all correctly labeled. The woman behind the counter pulled out a wooden box at Pauline’s request - temperature logs, handwritten, going back four years. There were allergen labels and batch numbers. The floor was spotlessly clean.
The place smelled of cultured cream and beeswax, and something faintly herbal. She couldn’t place it.
The woman looked to be somewhere in her fifties.
“Mrs. Okoro?”
“You’re here for the inspection?” She turned away from the counter, opening the nearest chiller. “You’ll want to try this hard one. It’s been aging since last year.”
Pauline glanced over her shoulder and wrote down the temperature reading. She accepted the small piece of cheese on a square of wax paper.
The cheese was very good.
It only took twenty minutes to finish her front-of-house inspection. There was nothing actionable.
“Now I’ll need to see the production area,” Pauline said. “And if you could show me your operating documents - licensing, registration, business certification, and so on.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Okoro gestured toward the back of the room.
There was a door. A brushed steel plate on it. Clean, sans-serif, securely screwed on.
Staff Only.
“My grandmother put that up,” Mrs. Okoro said. “I don’t know where she found it. She never said.” She looked at it. “Been there since I was a kid. She put it up and started making cheese. We’ve been here ever since.”
Pauline nodded. Looked at the plate on the door. Looked down at her clipboard. The waiting blank sections for registration numbers and certification dates.
“I’ll need access to the production area, Mrs. Okoro.”
“Yes, of course.” She shrugged. “It’s Staff Only, though.”
“I’m a council inspector.”
Mrs. Okoro smiled.
Pauline held out her laminated ID card. Her photograph, her name, title, and the Council’s crest.
Mrs. Okoro looked it over. “Seems fine,” she said. “If only it weren’t Staff Only.”
“I could issue a formal notice of the inspection. Then you’d be required to provide access.”
“I imagine so, yes.”
Pauline remembered that her supervisor was at a training off-site until Thursday. And formal notices required a countersignature. She moved on.
“Could you explain what constitutes staff, in this context?”
Mrs. Okoro seemed to consider her answer. “People who work here.”
“Is there some way you could designate me as staff? For the inspection.”
“That’s an interesting question.” She shrugged. “There might be a process. I wouldn’t know how to go about it.”
“And the plate itself,” said Pauline. “You’re saying it’s your founding documentation - like a license, in effect. So I’d need to examine it. Could I take it into evidence, as it were?”
Mrs. Okoro looked at the plate. Looked back at Pauline. “It’s attached to the door.”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“I’d be delighted to show you everything you’d need,” said Mrs. Okoro. Her tone was warm, almost apologetic. “It’s all right there. Records, equipment, everything.” She gestured again. “It’s just that it’s Staff Only.”
It was the fourth establishment she’d been to that day. The second had had a refrigeration unit that drained, quite inventively, into the parking lot.
The cheese had been very good indeed.
“Would you like something else?” Mrs. Okoro moved back toward the counter. “There’s a soft goat, and this washed rind is seasonal.” She reached for some more wax paper. “I could wrap something up.”
Pauline’s notes reported the compliant shop floor, and the meticulous temperature records. She detailed the appropriate allergen labeling.
Access to the production facility had been unavailable during the site visit. She recommended a follow-up inspection, at the department’s discretion. The earliest slot was twelve weeks from now.
She ate the washed rind on the bus home.
This story was my 1st round entry for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2026. My genre, location, and object prompts were:
Comedy. A creamery. A doorplate.
This story finished in 3rd place in my group for that round of the contest.
Article photo by Getty Images on Unsplash.