How we grade
Florida does not issue letter grades. The state records what an inspector found and how the visit ended, and that is all. The grades on this site are ours — a summary of those public records, computed the same way for every kitchen in the state. Here is the whole formula.
Every kitchen starts at 100. Points come off for what inspectors recorded in the last 365 days. Anything older than 180 days counts at half weight, because a kitchen that fixed a problem eight months ago is not the kitchen that had it.
| What happened | Points | Why |
|---|---|---|
| High priority violation | −8 | The state's own term for a violation that can directly cause illness — temperature abuse, live vermin, sewage, bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat food. |
| Intermediate violation | −3 | Something that makes a high-priority failure more likely, like a broken thermometer or a manager without certification. |
| Basic violation | −1 | Housekeeping and maintenance. Real, but not how anyone gets ill. |
| Ordered shut | −25 | The inspector stopped the kitchen operating on the spot. |
| Ordered shut, still not fixed | −15 | A return visit that left the closure in place. |
| Referred for a formal case | −12 | The department recommended an administrative complaint, which can end in a fine. |
| Warning issued | −5 | Violations found, with a return visit required. |
| More time given | −2 to −4 | A return visit where the problems weren't fixed yet. |
| Disciplinary final order in the last 2 years | −15 each | A completed case against the licensee, usually with a fine. |
A kitchen not inspected in about fifteen months gets no grade — shown as N/R rather than a letter. A grade from two years ago describes a kitchen that may have changed hands twice. We would rather say nothing than say something stale, so those places keep a full inspection history and no letter.
Grades punish. Badges are the other half, and they are earned on the same record, by the same arithmetic — a restaurant cannot apply for one and cannot pay for one.
| Spotless | Zero violations of any kind on the most recent inspection. |
| Clean Streak | Three or more consecutive inspections with zero high-priority violations. |
| Perfect Year | No violations at all in the last twelve months. |
| Never Fined | No disciplinary action on record, across five or more inspections. |
Licensing inspections — the ones done before a kitchen opens to the public — are on every timeline but are left out of streaks and badges. A spotless inspection of an empty room says very little about how the place runs on a Saturday night.
Being honest about the limits is part of publishing the grade at all.
- Inspection frequency isn't uniform. The state visits higher-risk kitchens more often. More visits means more chances to record something, so a busy A is a harder A than a quiet one.
- A complaint inspection is not a routine one. It happens because somebody rang the state. We score them the same, which is arguably unfair to a kitchen that got one malicious call.
- Inspectors are people. Two of them can walk the same kitchen and write different numbers of basic violations. That variation is inside every grade here.
- Nothing here is about food. No grade on this site says anything about whether a restaurant is any good.
The records come straight from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation and are refreshed nightly. We don't edit them — not the wording, not the spelling, not the punctuation. If a record on this site doesn't match the state's, that's our bug and we want to know: tell us about it. If the state's own record is wrong, that correction has to be made with the department, and we'll pick it up on the next pull.