On February 15, 2011, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) foodborne illness hotline received a complaint of gastrointestinal illness regarding a party of 25 individuals from several different businesses who had eaten a catered box lunch together on February 9, 2011. The lunch was catered by a restaurant in Maple Grove and consumed at a company in Brooklyn Park.

There were no other shared meals identified among the catered lunch group. All 25 individuals in the group were interviewed and 13 (52%) met the case definition. A stool specimen collected from a case tested positive for norovirus GII.

Illness histories and job duty information were obtained from the 19 restaurant employees. No
employees reported having had gastrointestinal illness previous to or on the implicated meal date.
HSPHD sanitarians noted several critical violations when conducting an inspection of the restaurant.
Critical violations included failure to wash hands after every possible contamination, some refrigerated ready-to-eat foods not date marked, and the slicer not cleaned or sanitized properly.

The sanitarians provided steps to correct the critical and non-critical violations and further stressed the importance of proper handling of food and beverages, use of gloves when handling ready-to-eat foods, good handwashing, thorough disinfection, and exclusion of ill employees. The restaurant received no additional complaints and no reports of employee illness.

This was a foodborne outbreak of norovirus gastroenteritis associated with eating food from a restaurant. The vehicle of transmission was not identified.