Wrong capitol, wrong café: (left) Joni Spinka, operator of Joni’s Capitol Café, says a rumor confusing her café with one in Charleston, W. Va., has hurt business.
Still cooking: (right) Mary Wise is a cook at Joni’s Capitol Café.

Joni Spinka noticed the drop in sales at her cafeteria — Joni’s Capitol Café — about the time the rumor cropped up.
It was around early October that the calls started coming in. People said they heard the cafeteria had been closed for health violations. Like many rumors, this one had a kernel of truth. A Capitol cafeteria had been shut down — in West Virginia.
But customers at Joni’s heard it differently, from an apparently reliable source.
“A couple of women at the register said they heard on the radio we were closed,” Ms. Spinka said. “No one could tell me what radio station. Being down here, I never listen to the radio.”
“Down here” is the basement of the Executive Tower. Ms. Spinka has operated the basement cafeteria for nine years through the Arizona Business Enterprise Program, administered by the Department of Economic Security.
In AzBEP, people who are blind operate cafeterias and other enterprises in state-owned buildings. Ms. Spinka, 53, has been legally blind for 26 years, the result of a fungal infection that attacked her retinas. She has no center vision.
Ms. Spinka spoke to a reporter around mid-morning, before the lunch rush. Between questions, she rung up an occasional customer. Her cash register shouted out the prices as she hit the keys, since she cannot see numbers on the screen.
All cafeteria operators in the Business Enterprise Program get the same start, she said. They’re fronted $500 and enough inventory to get off the ground. They have to leave the same for their successor.
According to a DES Web site, AzBEP receives no money from the state, but gets some federal funding.
Otherwise, the enterprise works just like any business. Ms. Spinka pays employee wages and overhead. What’s left is her profit. Some days are better than others, she said.
“I’ve had months … where I’ve made less than my employees,” she said.
Confusion costs her business
So it hit her directly when sales began to fall off by $200 to $300 a day in early October. In the lingo of statisticians, there was a strong correlation between that and the rumor.
An employee from the Arizona Department of Commerce uncovered a possible explanation. After an Internet search, she showed Joni an Oct. 3 article from the Charleston Daily Mail. It reported officials had closed down the Capitol cafeteria for health-code violations.
The cafeteria in this case, however, was the Capitol Complex Cafeteria in Charleston, W. Va., some 2,000 miles east of Joni’s.
Citing a report from the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, the article detailed sanitation violations that involved gnats, cockroaches and dirty equipment. The Charleston cafeteria, at one time, had been run by the West Virginia Society for the blind. But it was turned over to a private contractor — a former restaurant owner — in 1995.
Whoever operated the Charleston cafeteria was of little consequence to Ms. Spinka. She’s just disturbed by the mix-up. She points to a wall to next the cash register. Fixed to it is a poster of gold stars from the Maricopa County Environmental Health Services Division, which inspects restaurants and cafeterias.
A gold star is the highest award given by inspectors.
“We work real hard to get our gold stars,” Ms. Spinka said. “It’s upsetting that people even think we were closed down.”
A quick look at the Environmental Services Web site backs up Ms. Spinka. A link to Joni’s inspection results shows gold stars all the way. The last violation, reported in June, involved an improper solution of a bleach cleanser. It was corrected on the spot.
In short, Ms. Spinka runs a clean café. And customers are beginning to return, she said. But rumors are slow to die. This one is no different, Ms. Spinka says.
Recently, an employee at DES heard from a co-worker that Joni’s had been shuttered. Despite recent foot surgery, the employee decided to make the crossing on Jefferson Street and hobble to Joni’s for lunch.
“She knew we had a good health-department report, so she didn’t take her co-workers’ word for it,” Ms. Spinka said.