Air Force Academy ends contract with bakery after finding evidence of rodents, insects in food

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - Sharon Watt remembers seeing mice scurry across the floor during her first day at Dr. Sweet’s Bakery in Colorado Springs and is glad the bakery now sits empty.

Dr. Sweet’s was Watt’s first bakery job. She started in February and said she couldn’t wait to learn from the owner Rafal Zalewski, who touted 40 years of baking experience. However, Watt only lasted a week after witnessing unsanitary conditions.

“I'd come in in the morning and I'd see poop on the machines that were pressing bread and kneading dough,” she said. “He had a little special brush where he told you to just sweep the poop off.”

Dr. Sweet’s was a wholesale food seller, meaning it didn’t have a storefront and instead sold its products to contracted clients. One of its biggest clients was the Air Force Academy, which had contracted with Dr. Sweets since 2017.

“He was serving to the Air Force and the military, my brother was in the military, and to find that out that hit me really hard,” Watt said.

Before Watt quit at the end of February, she said she confronted Zalewski, who dismissed her.

“It's like affecting you coming to work every day knowing that he's not going to do anything about it,” Watt said. “If nobody's going to do anything about it, then I will do something about it.”

The first call Watt made when she quit was to the Air Force Academy. She said she warned them about the conditions of the bakery and how its food might be contaminated. The Academy told KRDO13 Investigates it inspected the most recent deliveries by Dr. Sweet’s after Watt’s warning and the “inspection revealed the supplies did not conform to standards.”

According to records obtained by KRDO13 Investigates, photos of the product show muffins and bread with mice chew marks. After the discovery, the Air Force Academy ended its contract with Dr. Sweet’s.

“Government contracts in general allow government representatives to inspect supplies and services to ensure the contractor is conforming to safety, reliability, and sanitation standards,” the Air Force Academy said in a statement. “If supplies and services do not meet standards, the government maintains the right to modify or terminate those contracts.”

The El Paso County Health Department was also notified of the conditions inside Dr. Sweet’s Bakery. However, wholesale food sellers are regulated by the state, so the concerns were passed on to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The agency oversees more than 2,100 wholesale food manufacturers in the state, including 149 in El Paso County. These companies must comply with state standards, which mirror federal regulations, and are similar to storefronts and restaurants which sell directly to consumers.

“Anything you see on a store shelf, from aisle one to aisle 12 is what you can see in these (wholesale food) facilities,” said Jeff Lawrence, the director of the Division of Environmental Health and Sustainability at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “So it's from breads and baked goods all the way to the salsas and other refrigerated items.”

Lawrence said health departments often receive more complaints about storefronts or restaurants that sell food directly to consumers because wholesale food companies don’t have as much customer traffic. However, he said it ultimately comes down to the quality of the food.

“The commodity itself is what people will be making that complaint on whether at the retail or the manufacturing setting,” Lawrence said. “If that's not meeting their standards, whether those are ours or not, we hear about it.”

Inspection records of Dr. Sweet’s Bakery obtained by KRDO13 Investigates said, “A significant amount of rodent feces was observed throughout the facility as well as live/dead ants.” Zalewski told the inspector he ended the contract with the pest control company back in November or December. He said he recently contracted with Orkin but couldn’t provide invoices. When the state followed up a couple of days later, the inspector didn’t find “rodent droppings or rodent activity.”

KRDO13 Investigates reached out to Zalewski on Wednesday about the conditions inside his bakery. He said he “wasn’t interested” and hung up the phone.