Scoring page

Explanation of Health Inspection Scores
Throughout the country local health juristictions perform unanounced inspections of restauants and retail food stores. Each food facilty is often inspected several times per year. The inspectors are looking for health violations and each violation found is assigned a point deduction by the health department. More severe violations incur larger point penalties. At the end of each inspection a written summary is issued and in some counties a score is given. Thus, the summary reports, and if given – the scores - are based on the views of expert government health authorities.

The violations which are potentially most dangerous to consumers tend to concern food temperatures, emplyee health issues or other risky behavors. Many foods need to be kept at certain temperatures to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria. While cockroaches may be disturbing to people, this is actually not the most dangerous hygiene violation. Consequently, food temperature violations often incur the largest point penalties.

If we look at the scoring system of different counties across the US we see great variation: different counties use different violations’ list, in some counties the inspector assign a score at the end of the inspection and in other counties he only fills a violations report (with no score); some of the counties that uses a scoring system rate the best restaurants with a 100 score while others may award an A. Some counties even use the golf score system were a score of 0 is the highest point value. In this case the higher the point value the lower the score. These variations can be very confusing.

At the end of the day the inspectors all around the country are all looking at the same issues: temperature violations, cleanliness, cockroaches etc, the reports they issues varies from one county to another in the way they name the violations and in the scoring method.

CleanScores is collecting the health inspection information from across the country and, based on the FDA recommended inspection form, is standardizing the data and making it easily accessible & understandable for consumers. This way, consumers can compare apples to apples and although NY assigns 0 to the cleanest restaurant and San Francisco a 100, on CleanScores both restaurants receives 5 stars and can be compared.

Also, in order to make the data more easily understood we took the violations list, which is written in a very technical language, and, based on the work of food health experts, shortened each violation and presented it in a language all of us can understand.

If you hover over the violation you will see the official FDA description of the relevant violation.


CleanScores’ stars system

At the top of each restaurant's page, under the name of the restaurant, is a star showing the most recent CleanScores’ score for this restaurant. By placing your mouse over the stars, a box will appear and tell you what percentile of restaurants scored lower.

CleanScores is using the official inspection results, standardizing it and displaying it for your convenience as described below:
5 stars: this place is shining & clean
4 stars: this place is o.k.
3 stars: you need to start worrying
2 stars; you need to be very worried
1 star: we recommend not eating there until they clean up the place

What are the Best and Worst Restaurants?

Restaurants with three or more inspections are eligible to be considered as one of CleanScores' Best or Worst Restaurants. CleanScores' Best Restaurants have had perfect (5 stars) scores for their last three inspections. CleanScores' Worst Restaurants have had a score of below 3 stars for each of their last three inspections. The Worst Restaurants are displayed from worst to best by the average score of their last three inspections.

Please let us know if you have any questions about the hygiene scores or suggestions for improvement in the site.