Back in 2013, Yelp introduced an attribute that someone who values hygiene above all else would love: restaurants’ health inspection scores. The website has only been displaying ratings on select restaurants’ pages in New York and San Francisco, though, since the feature is part of the company’s Local Inspector Value-entry Specification (LIVES) program developed with those megacities’ local health departments. Now, the crowdsourced reviews portal is expanding its availability nationwide, giving you easy access to establishments’ hygiene score cards across the US. You don’t have to painstakingly dig for them in government websites anymore.
Over the past five years, Yelp added health inspection scores to over 200,000 business pages. It now expects that number to balloon to nearly a million as it incorporates ratings from the official Health Department Inspection Scores database, which covers 42 states and a third of the population in the country. The website has already added data for more restos in New York, California, Texas, Illinois and DC and plans to continue adding more, state by state, in the coming months.
In its announcement, Yelp referenced a study that looked into the impact of publicly posted hygiene grade cards on restaurants in LA County. The study found that the more visible the ratings are, the lower the number of hospitalizations due to foodborne illness is. After all, businesses will likely strive to improve their hygiene practices if they know that customers can see if they’re lacking in the cleanliness department.