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Tech Thursday, January 17th 2013 at 10:33 am

I Kinda Don’t Want to Know? Yelp to Provide Health Department Scores for Your Favorite Restaurants

Do you want to know how clean your favorite restaurant is? Honestly, you probably don’t — sometimes you just want to enjoy a good box of Chinese takeout and not think too hard about the process behind your egg foo yung. If you’re one of those folks who absolutely must know, though, there’s good news on the horizon as Yelp is teaming up with local governments to add health inspection details to its restaurant listings. The service rolls out today in San Francisco with New York following suit in a few weeks, but any municipality will soon be able to offer up its health inspection data and keep you abreast of everything that ever happened in the kitchen of your favorite pizza joint, which you will soon never be able to even look at again. Thanks, Yelp.

Yelp’s listings will now be accompanied by the restaurant’s latest health inspection score, represented on a 100 point scale. If you’re a glutton for punishment as well as ravioli, though, you’ll be able to dig even deeper into restaurant histories, taking a look at not only their most recent (see also: only pertinent) inspection grade, but getting the gory details of its inspection history. I’ll say it again, because I don’t think it can be emphasized strongly enough: speaking as someone with no small amount of experience in food service, you really, really don’t want to know. Just enjoy the meal.

You can learn more about the program on Yelp’s blog here.

(via TechCrunch)

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bruce-E-Screws-Jr/5200506 Bruce E. Screws Jr.

    “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman. ” – Louis Brandeis

    I strongly suspect that posting them in a public forum will drive scores up.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t know here in the UK, you will find everyone who has a decent health rating for the food will have right on the door or in window by the door and it is green

  • Phil

    NYC has been posting “letter grades” (a,b,c,f) for close to a decade in it’s resturants. Myself if I notice the dining room is a mess I’ll just order a drink at the bar, then I’ll look for the door!!