Restaurant Health Inspections: Reports, Scores, and Grades

Restaurant health inspections are unannounced visits by local health department officials who check food establishments against the FDA Food Code, document any violations, and publish the results in public reports you can look up online. The inspections happen on a risk-based schedule, violations are sorted by how directly they can make someone sick, and the restaurant has to fix problems within deadlines set by the severity of what was found.¹

Who Inspects Restaurants and Under What Rules

Inspections are carried out by local health departments acting under police powers delegated by the state. That authority is broad: inspectors can enter food establishments during operating hours, evaluate safety practices, and shut down operations that pose an immediate threat to public health.²

The rulebook they enforce traces back to the FDA Food Code, but the Food Code itself is not a binding federal regulation. It is a model document the FDA publishes so state, local, and tribal governments have a scientifically grounded template for their own food safety rules.³ Each jurisdiction then adopts the Food Code in full, adopts it with modifications, or writes its own rules based on its framework. The practical result: core safety requirements are consistent nationwide, but scoring systems, fees, and enforcement timelines differ from one county to the next. Everything below describes the baseline most local rules follow. Your jurisdiction may be stricter or slightly different.

How Often Restaurants Get Inspected

Health departments use a risk-based system to set inspection frequency. Establishments that handle raw animal proteins, do extensive cooking, or cool large batches of food are categorized as higher risk and generally receive at least two routine inspections per year. A coffee shop or convenience store that only serves prepackaged items or reheats commercially processed food might see an inspector just once a year.¹ Some jurisdictions add a third or fourth category for the most complex operations, like those doing smoking, curing, or sprouting.

Routine visits are not the only ones. Several things trigger an off-schedule inspection:

Consumer complaints about unsanitary conditions or suspected foodborne illness. These are the most common trigger.
A failed routine inspection, which generates a mandatory follow-up (sometimes within days) to confirm dangerous violations have actually been fixed. Many jurisdictions charge re-inspection fees to cover the added cost.
An illness cluster linked to a specific restaurant. The scope shifts from a standard compliance check to an investigation that may involve sample collection, employee interviews, and a detailed food-flow analysis.

What Inspectors Check

The FDA Food Code sorts violations into three tiers based on how directly they affect whether someone gets sick. The tier determines how fast the restaurant has to fix the problem.

Priority Items

These are the violations most likely to cause foodborne illness if left uncorrected. Temperature control sits at the center: food that needs refrigeration must stay at 41°F or below, and hot-held food must stay at 135°F or above.¹ Improper cooking temperatures, contaminated food contact surfaces, and employees handling ready-to-eat food with bare hands all fall here. Priority violations must be corrected during the inspection itself, though an inspector can grant up to 72 hours if the fix is complex.⁴

Priority Foundation Items

These support the priority items. Calibrated thermometers so staff can actually verify temperatures. Adequate hand soap at every handwashing sink. Proper date-marking of refrigerated foods. A restaurant gets up to 10 calendar days to correct a priority foundation violation if it cannot be fixed on the spot.⁴

Core Items

Core items cover general sanitation, facility maintenance, and equipment condition. A cracked floor tile, a missing light shield over a prep area, a cluttered storage room. They matter, but they do not pose the same immediate danger. The correction deadline is set by the inspector but cannot exceed 90 calendar days.¹

Cross-Contamination and Sanitation

Inspectors watch how a kitchen keeps raw and ready-to-eat foods separated. Raw meat must be stored below ready-to-eat items in walk-in coolers and reach-in refrigerators to prevent dripping. Chemical sanitizing solutions on food contact surfaces must hit specific concentrations, with chlorine-based sanitizers in the 50 to 99 parts-per-million range at the right temperature. Handwashing gets scrutinized too: employees must scrub with soap for at least 20 seconds, and handwashing sinks must supply water at a minimum of 85°F.¹

Pests

Evidence of rodents or cockroaches is among the most serious findings an inspector can document. The Food Code requires the premises to be kept free of insects, rodents, and other pests, and an active infestation often leads to an immediate order to cease operations until the problem is resolved.¹

Employee Illness

One area where restaurants most often fall short is employee illness policies. The Food Code requires every food worker to report specific symptoms to their manager before working: vomiting, diarrhea, jaundice, sore throat with fever, and any open or draining wound on the hands or exposed arms.⁴ Employees must also disclose diagnoses of norovirus, hepatitis A, shigella, salmonella, typhoid fever, or shiga toxin-producing E. coli.

Depending on the symptom or diagnosis, the person in charge must either restrict the employee from food handling or exclude them from the establishment entirely. Vomiting, diarrhea, or signs of jaundice require exclusion. A sore throat with fever triggers exclusion only if the restaurant serves a high-risk population like a hospital or nursing home; otherwise, the employee is restricted from food contact duties. Hepatitis A or typhoid fever diagnoses carry the strictest return-to-work requirements, typically involving clearance from both a medical provider and the local health authority. Having no written illness policy, or having one that exists only on paper, is itself a priority violation.

Imminent Health Hazards

Certain emergencies require a restaurant to stop operating immediately and notify the health department without waiting for an inspector. The Food Code lists fires, floods, extended loss of electricity or water, sewage backups, toxic chemical misuse, and the onset of a suspected foodborne illness outbreak.¹ Once a restaurant shuts down for an imminent health hazard, it cannot reopen until the health authority grants approval. Inspectors see violations of this rule most often during power outages, where a restaurant keeps serving food even as refrigeration temperatures climb above safe levels.

What Happens When a Restaurant Fails

When a restaurant does not correct violations by the deadline, the health department has escalating tools. The typical progression starts with a follow-up inspection and moves through an office conference with management, mandatory staff retraining, menu restrictions that limit what the restaurant can prepare, and ultimately temporary or permanent closure. Monetary fines for serious or repeated violations vary widely by jurisdiction but commonly range from $50 to several thousand dollars per violation. Re-inspection fees, charged separately, typically fall in the low hundreds.

Permit suspension and revocation sit at the top of the enforcement ladder. A suspension is usually temporary, lasting until the restaurant demonstrates compliance. Revocation is permanent and forces the business to go through the full permitting process from scratch to reopen.

Looking Up a Restaurant’s Inspection Record

Inspection results are public records, and most health departments now make them available through searchable online databases. You can typically look up any restaurant by name or address and see its most recent report along with historical results going back several years. Each report lists every violation found, the code section involved, and whether the violation was corrected on site or given a deadline.

Scores and Letter Grades

How those raw results get communicated depends on where you live. Some jurisdictions use a numerical score on a 100-point scale, with deductions weighted by violation severity. Others assign letter grades, where an “A” reflects high compliance and a “C” signals substantial problems. A number of jurisdictions skip both and simply report whether the restaurant passed or failed. Where letter grades or numerical scores are used, local laws generally require the restaurant to post the current result visibly near the entrance, so you can see it before walking in.

Reading the Report

A single low score does not necessarily mean a restaurant is dangerous. The pattern matters more. Repeated priority violations across multiple inspections, especially the same violation appearing again and again, suggests a management problem rather than a one-time lapse. Weight temperature control, employee hygiene, and pest activity more heavily than minor core items like a missing ceiling tile. A restaurant that occasionally gets dinged for a cracked floor but consistently nails its food temperatures is in far better shape than one with a spotless facility and chronic cold-holding failures.

If You Got Sick After Eating Somewhere

Reporting suspected foodborne illness to your local health department creates the paper trail that can trigger an investigation and protect other diners. Most departments accept complaints by phone or through an online portal. The information investigators need is specific: when you ate, what you ordered, when symptoms started, and what the symptoms were. Consumer complaints are the most common reason an unannounced inspection happens outside the routine schedule, and a cluster of reports about the same restaurant is often what connects a scattered set of illnesses to a single source.

1
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Food Code 2022
2
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Field Epidemiology Manual – Legal Issues
3
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Food Code
4
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Food Code 2022