Letter Grades Come To Restaurants
By Brian M. Rafferty
Starting in July, restaurants across Queens and the rest of the City will start having to display letter grades reflecting their inspections from the NYC Health Department.The grade system, which runs A through C, will be based on rules that still remain to be written, but will be composite scores of a variety of inspection standards. The Health Dept. urges that though a restaurant may show a C grade, it does not mean it is unsafe to eat there - any restaurant that is not safe is required to close in order to fix the problem and retested before it can reopen.
Under the new system, restaurants will receive grades based on the number of violations documented during their sanitary inspections. Each establishment will post a placard at the point of entry, showing its current sanitary grade, and restaurants receiving A grades will be inspected less often than those receiving lower marks, according to the Dept. of Health.
"New York City restaurants are among the world's best, and these simple reforms will make them even better," said Dr. Thomas Farley, New York City Health Commissioner. "Giving consumers more information will help make our restaurants safer and cleaner. The grade in the window will give you a sense of how clean the kitchen is - and it will give every restaurant operator an incentive to maintain safe, sanitary conditions."
Each year the Health Department inspects 24,000 restaurants to monitor their compliance with the city's health code, and most establishments maintain good or excellent conditions. Restaurants are fined for health code violations, but public posting of letter grades provides a stronger incentive to maintain the best sanitary conditions.
The Health Department already posts restaurant inspection reports on its website. Each report includes a numerical score reflecting the number and severity of sanitary violations documented. The inspection process will not change under the new system, but the new letter grades will be simpler than numerical scores, and consumers won't need to go online to find them. Each letter grade will correspond to a range of numerical scores.
Under the new plan, a restaurant receiving an A grade will post it at the end of the inspection. If the grade is lower than an A, the restaurant will not have to post a grade until it has a chance to improve its sanitary conditions. The Health Department will return within a month to conduct a second inspection. Restaurant operators who contest their assigned grades will be able to post "grade pending" signs until they have had an opportunity to be heard at hearing.
For more information on the proposed restaurant grading system, go to nyc.gov/html/doh/html/notice/notice.shtml.
Reach Editor Brian M. Rafferty at brafferty@queenstribune.com or (718) 357-7400, Ext. 122.