Restaurant Inspections: What’s A Good Score?

I asked Director of Health Mike Crespan to explain a little bit more about the Department’s inspection scores. “First,” he said, “You can’t compare the rating of a full-service restaurant with a hot-dog stand because there are so many more items to look at in a restaurant.”

Noting that the big areas of inspection are food handling, personal hygiene, temperature control and sanitizing, Mike says, “You should be cautious if you see a score lower than 90 for a full-service restaurant and for a hot-dog stand a 90 really isn’t very good and you should be concerned.”

There are 4, 2 and 1 point violations, the 4-point violations being the worst. “A score of less than 80 usually indicates the existence of 4-point violations,” Mike said, “And a score of 80 or less requires reinspection after two weeks.”