A new food safety restaurant rating may be on it’s way

Many of us in Australia have started seeing signs in the restaurants we go to showing the number of food safety stars they have received. These are called star ratings and are given by local councils based on compliance with specific food safety requirements. Five stars is the highest and obviously what all food businesses want to be, and be seen as.

Many people would have heard and seen the New South Wales Food Authority’s Name and Shame Register, which shows the businesses that have had non compliances to the Food Standards Code and NSW Food Act and the penalty they have had to pay. The Register details the actual non compliance and the name and address of the business, so it is very obvious that the specific business has had food safety issues.

So what have both of these to do with each other, they are both about letting the public know more information about where they are eating.

Another such source is starting on line. YELP is an online resource for information about restaurants and the quality of the food, service and ambience.

YELP has just started putting out pop up alerts in San Francisco about bad mhaelth inspectyor grades on restaurants.

If a business ranks in the bottom 5 percent in the food safety scores, a notice automatically appears when a user looks at that restaurant.

So what will that do to the restaurant?

YELP is working with an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School (Michael Luca)to determine what effect the new notices have. They are hoping that the potential of the notice appearing will actively encourage restaurants to improve food safety compliance.

Be aware, this could be coming to a similar application in Australia.