Records show Salem RAM was in disrepair prior to abrupt closure 

Former employees of Salem’s RAM Restaurant & Brewery, which abruptly closed on June 18, said the restaurant was in physical disrepair leading up to about 40 employees being laid off without notice.

The closure caught employees and customers by surprise. Social media channels at the time shared posts about memories of the Salem gathering spot and questions about the closure.

An investigation by Salem Reporter established a more full account of what happened.

The restaurant’s kitchen ceiling collapsed, nearly striking a former kitchen worker on March 25, 2023. The incident prompted a citation for a serious violation and a fine from Oregon’s workplace safety agency. The collapse was caused by a leaking pipe in the ceiling which was dripping water onto an electrical wire, a state inspection report said.

County health inspectors documented plumbing issues and broken or damaged equipment in inspections between 2021 and 2024.

Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the restaurant on May 23, 2023, for not protecting employees from falling objects. The restaurant, which does business in Oregon under the name Salem 4 LLC, was fined $180. The citation was addressed to Jeffery Iverson, manager of Salem 4 LLC, who is the CEO of the Washington-based RAM Restaurant Group.

Oregon OSHA spokesman Aaron Corvin confirmed the citation was paid on June 7, 2023.

A Marion County Environmental Health inspection report from December 2023 obtained through a public records request detailed the crumbling ceiling held together using duct tape months after it collapsed.

Iverson responded to an interview request immediately after the closure by answering questions over email. He later declined to comment and did not respond to written questions from Salem Reporter about the building’s condition or the OSHA citation. 

Iverson also did not respond to excerpts of this story provided ahead of publication to review for accuracy. 

Iverson told Salem Reporter following the closure that the establishment at 515 12th Street S.E. was no longer viable for a number of reasons, and that the company decided to close it down because it was not doing well. 

The company has 13 restaurants in Wilsonville and Medford, Idaho and Washington.

Iverson said soon after the closure that he hoped the former Salem RAM employees would come back to the company once it found a more suitable location in the Salem area. Iverson told Salem Reporter the historic building was intact.

“There are no issues with the structure. That is completely false,” Iverson said in an email on June 19. “In fact the roof is approximately five years old.”

City of Salem records confirmed SERVPRO, a water damage restoration service in West Salem, had acquired a building permit to perform demolition and mitigate water damage in the restaurant’s kitchen ceiling in 2019. The city has no record that required city inspections were completed after construction.  

“The red-headed stepchild” 

Mia Lopez had been working as a server at the RAM for seven years before she heard she no longer had a job on June 18. She said over the years she got used to working in what she considered to be subpar conditions. 

“Our pipes would burst and we would be working in our server well over down by the bar, and there would be two inches of water on the floor, and the carpets would be saturated,” Lopez said. “It was disgusting, and it was extremely unpleasant.”

Lopez said the running joke among the employees was that the Salem RAM was the “red-headed stepchild” of the RAM Restaurant Group.

High performing managers would routinely be whisked away to other restaurants, and much needed repairs and upgrades would not be done, she said. 

“There were so many employees that would walk out because they would see the state of our building. They would see that our roof was caving in, the ceiling tiles were falling down, our pipes were bursting in the back kitchen,” Lopez said. “It was wildly unsafe.”

Contacted immediately after the closure, Regional Manager Kelly VanMatre said he was not authorized to speak on the matter, referring questions to the corporate office. However, he later responded via text message.  

“The building was over 50 years old and no building that old doesn’t have repair issues,” VanMatre said. “It is completely false to say the Ram didn’t fix things that broke. Pipes would burst and then we would schedule a repair just like other places.”

A crumbling ceiling

Braxton Downey, a former kitchen worker, reported the restaurant to Oregon OSHA after nearly being struck by the falling ceiling.

Former employees shared a video of the collapse and photos of the aftermath with Salem Reporter. The same images were included in the state’s May 23 inspection report.

Oregon Cascade Plumbing and Heating repaired the restaurant’s leaking pipe on March 27, the state report said.

A state OSHA inspector visited the restaurant on March 30, five days after the ceiling collapsed. The inspector said drywall in the ceiling was scheduled for repair later that week.

The agency cited the company in May.

“The employer did not ensure the kitchen area by the sink, with the ceiling that was reported as an issue, was barricaded to prevent employees from any falling hazards in the event of the ceiling collapsing,” the report said. 

The inspector’s report showed conflicting accounts of when restaurant managers became aware of the ceiling’s issues.

A former server at the Salem RAM told inspectors the ceiling had been an issue for about two months, when stains started to appear. He told inspectors the ceiling started sagging a week before it collapsed.

A chef told the inspector that the restaurant’s manager, Tom Techentien, found the leak in the ceiling the day before the collapse. The chef said Techentien verbally told employees to stay away from the area the day he discovered the leak. “Wet floor” signs were placed in the area, the report said.

Techentien couldn’t be reached for comment.

But VanMatre told the OSHA inspector that managers only learned of the leak in the ceiling on March 25, the day the ceiling collapsed. 

“The leak was found on Saturday and the ceiling fell on Saturday after we cleared the area out recognizing it was not safe at that time. We did not use caution tape as that is not something we generally stock in the restaurant,” VanMatre told inspectors. “I will say it is possible the leak was going on Friday and no one reported it to a leader but I do find that a bit hard to believe. I cannot totally rule it out though as no leaders specifically inspected the ceiling on Friday.”  

Downey told Salem Reporter that he warned his managers about the ceiling prior to the collapse. 

After the incident, Downey said he went home and refused to work until the ceiling was fixed. When he later returned for a scheduled shift on March 30 after the pipe had been repaired, Downey said the ceiling was still open.

He told his manager he still didn’t feel comfortable working in conditions he considered unsafe. Downey said he was fired later that day. 

“Fever dream” 

VanMatre acknowledged the ceiling collapse, but said repairs were made and inspected by an OSHA inspector. 

Lopez and six other former employees said duct tape was used on the crumbling ceiling months after it was inspected by OSHA. 

A county food service inspection report showed that on Dec. 20, 2023, months after the ceiling nearly collapsed on Downey, inspectors cited the ceiling and other issues in the restaurant. 

“Observed the ceiling in dishwasher area to be repaired with tape in some areas and in poor repair in other areas,” the county inspector wrote.

The inspector wrote that the restaurant needed to correct the issue. 

“Physical facilities shall be maintained in good repair,” the report said.

The December report also cited “cracked or missing (floor) tiles throughout kitchen and bar, some with pooling water.” 

City records showed SERVPRO got a building permit in 2019 for “The RAM “soft” ceiling demo – Kitchen due to water damage.” The project was estimated to cost $2,500 to work on 224 square feet of ceiling. 

According to city officials, projects such as the planned RAM ceiling repairs require a follow-up inspection by the city. 

“There are no records of any inspections conducted by our staff or requested by applicant,” said Keith Sekishiro, city building and safety division administrator. “Since it was never called in for inspection, we do not know if any work has taken place or if it was just not called in.” 

Downey said his experience at the RAM left him stunned. 

“Thinking back, it was like a fever dream or something,” Downey said.

Nighttime memo from management 

Janette Angulo would have reached her two-year mark as a server at the restaurant in August. 

Angulo found out the restaurant was closing when she clocked in for her shift on June 18. She was about to start opening for the day when a manager told her the restaurant had closed and she could go home. 

Later that evening, at 10:11 p.m., VanMatre sent out an email to the RAM’s former employees. 

“Unfortunately, with the age of the building and the large cost in repairs coupled with all costs being up we just could not make it work financially,” VanMatre said in the message, which former employees shared with Salem Reporter. “We are still looking for a new location for a Ram in Salem so hopefully we will find a spot and reopen.” 

Angulo said employees had been told by management before the abrupt closure that the company was actively seeking a new location and that they would potentially be out of work for two weeks at most in the transition.

“That’s all they were telling us the whole time. We knew we were probably going to stop working for a little bit, but we didn’t know we were not going to work at all,” Angulo said. “I understand if it had to close, and needed to be closed — because it was going through it, that place was barely holding on for its dear life — but I feel like they did not handle it properly at all. They really could have given us notice.”   

Heather Riordan worked in the kitchen at the Salem RAM starting in the fall of 2022. Before coming to Salem she worked at the RAM in Tacoma, Washington. She said she noticed a stark difference between how things were dealt with at the company’s Tacoma location compared to the Salem restaurant. 

“There were constant malfunctions and nothing seemed to get fixed in a timely manner. We would wait weeks and months to get stuff fixed,” Riordan said. “In Tacoma … within days, they had the ceilings fixed when there was a leak.” 

County restaurant inspection reports showed the restaurant was cited at least four times between December 2021 and June 2024 for damage to the restaurant’s walk-in cooler door. County officials said recently such damage didn’t pose a health risk, but that the environmental health department still requires restaurants to maintain equipment in good repair. 

Reports also cited four incidents of broken floor tiles and two instances of tape being used to fix damaged equipment, and the ceiling. 

In the June 10, 2024, inspection, only days before the closure, a county inspector cited standing water from a leak, a portion of a wall missing, broken floor tiles, and “observed damage to walk-in cooler door interior side” and “duct tape used to repair cook line prep cooler doors.”

Alisa Zastoupil, the county’s environmental health program supervisor, told Salem Reporter the county’s environmental health department does not fine violators.

Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected] or 503-335-7790.

A MOMENT MORE, PLEASE – If you found this story useful, consider subscribing to Salem Reporter if you don’t already. Work such as this, done by local professionals, depends on community support from subscribers. Please take a moment and sign up now – easy and secure: SUBSCRIBE.