A, 92, or Pass: Why Restaurant Grades Mean Different Things in Different Cities

You are standing outside a restaurant in a city you do not live in. There is a letter in the window, or a number on a placard, or a sticker that just says PASS. You want to know one thing: is this place okay?

Here is the problem. That letter, that number, and that sticker were produced by three different systems, built by three different local governments, using three different scoring philosophies. They look comparable. They are not. An A in one city can describe a cleaner kitchen than an A in another — or a dirtier one.

This is a guide to the three grading philosophies used across the United States, why the same letter means different things in different places, and what actually does travel between cities when you are trying to size up a restaurant.

Three grading philosophies

Almost every public-facing restaurant grade in the US falls into one of three buckets.

1. Letter grades. The inspector's findings get converted into an A, B, or C that goes in the window. New York City and Los Angeles County are the two best-known examples. The letter is designed to be read from the sidewalk in two seconds, which is both its strength and its weakness — a huge amount of detail collapses into one character.

2. Numeric or tiered placards. Some jurisdictions publish a score or a descriptive rating rather than a letter. King County, which covers Seattle, uses a four-tier placard system with ratings that run from an excellent-level rating down to a "needs to improve" rating, based on a rolling look at recent routine inspections rather than a single visit. Other counties post a raw numeric score out of 100.

3. Pass / fail. Chicago and a large number of other jurisdictions do not grade at all. An inspection results in pass, pass with conditions, or fail. There is no ranking inside "pass." A restaurant that squeaked through and a restaurant with a spotless report carry the same public label.

And then there is a fourth category that gets overlooked: cities and counties that publish nothing summarized at all. The inspection reports exist, often as public records searchable online, but no grade, placard, or sticker is produced. In those places the only way to evaluate a restaurant is to read the actual report.

Why an A in one city is not an A in another

The gap between systems is not cosmetic. It comes from three specific design decisions that each jurisdiction makes independently.

The scale runs in opposite directions. In New York City, points are bad. Each violation adds points, and a low total earns an A. In Los Angeles County, points are good. A restaurant starts near 100 and loses points for violations, and a high total earns an A. Two inspectors could write down nearly identical findings and produce numbers that look nothing alike.

The thresholds are set locally. Where the line falls between an A and a B is a policy choice made by a local health department or county board, not a national standard. Shift that threshold by a few points and the distribution of grades across a whole city changes overnight. This is a big part of why some jurisdictions end up with the overwhelming majority of restaurants holding an A — the cutoff, the re-inspection rules, and the violation weights combine to make an A the normal outcome rather than a distinction.

Re-inspection and posting rules differ. This one matters more than most people realize. Some jurisdictions let a restaurant that scores poorly request a re-inspection and post only the improved grade. Others require the original grade to stay in the window during the appeal window. Others post a "grade pending" notice. Same kitchen, same violations, three very different things in the window depending on where you are standing.

Stack those three differences together and cross-city grade comparison stops being meaningful. A B in a strict jurisdiction with tight thresholds and no grade-replacement policy may describe a better-run kitchen than an A in a lenient one.

What is actually comparable across cities

Here is the useful part. Underneath the grades, the systems are far more similar than they look — because most US health codes are modeled on the FDA Food Code, which is a model code that states and localities adopt and adapt.

That means the violation categories are largely shared even when the scoring is not. Nearly every inspection report in the country distinguishes between two kinds of findings:

• Risk factors and critical violations — the things directly tied to foodborne illness. Improper holding temperatures, inadequate cooking temperatures, cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat food, employee handwashing and health, and food from unsafe sources. Pest activity usually sits in or near this group.
• Good retail practices and non-critical violations — maintenance, cleanliness of non-food-contact surfaces, labeling, equipment condition, floors and ceilings. Real issues, but a step removed from someone getting sick.

Those categories travel. If you can find the actual report rather than just the grade, you can compare a restaurant in Seattle to a restaurant in Miami in a way that comparing a placard to a letter simply does not allow.

Three patterns are worth more than any single score:

Repeats. The same critical violation appearing across consecutive inspections is the strongest negative signal available in this data. One bad day is one bad day. The same temperature-holding failure three visits in a row is a process that nobody fixed.

Direction of travel. A restaurant moving from a poor result to a clean one over two or three inspections is telling you something different than a restaurant sliding the other way, even if their current grades match.

Severity, not count. Twelve minor findings about shelving and floor tile is a different report than two findings about raw chicken stored above produce. Grade math often flattens this distinction. Reading the report does not.

How to check any city fast

The practical workflow is the same almost everywhere, and it takes under a minute once you know the sequence.

Start with the county, not the city. Restaurant inspection is usually a county or district health department function, even for restaurants inside city limits. Searching for the county health department's food safety or restaurant inspection page gets you to the real source faster than searching the city name.

Look for the words "inspection results," "food safety search," or "restaurant scores." Most departments run a searchable public database. Some are polished; plenty are dated and clunky. The clunky ones usually have the same underlying data.

Open the full report, not just the summary. The summary gives you the grade or placard. The full report gives you the violation list, and that is where the actual information lives. Look specifically at what was flagged as critical or as a risk factor.

Read at least three inspections back. One report is a snapshot. Three is a pattern. This is the single highest-leverage habit in the whole exercise.

Check the date. Routine inspection frequency varies by jurisdiction and by risk category, and a placard in a window can be many months old. A report from last week and a report from eighteen months ago are not the same evidence.

If the jurisdiction publishes nothing at all — which happens more often than you would expect — the absence of a grade is not a red flag about the restaurant. It is a fact about the local government. In those places, the reports themselves may still be available by public records request, and third-party lookup tools that aggregate health-department data can save you the hunt.

The short version

Grades are a compression algorithm. Each city wrote its own, and they are not compatible with each other. If you are comparing two restaurants in the same city, the grade is a reasonable first filter. The moment you cross a city or county line, the letter stops being a common currency.

What survives the crossing is the underlying violation data — the categories, the severity, and above all the repeats. That takes thirty seconds longer to read and tells you considerably more than the sticker in the window.

About the author — Rick Jenkins is the founder of AI Revenue Forge. ARF builds vertical-specific AI virtual receptionists for service businesses in HVAC, dental, medspa, real estate, home health, credit repair, and pawn shops. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC. Part of Jenkins Worldwide Enterprises.