New York's report card day has arrived. As of July 28, the 24,000 restaurants in the Big Apple will be required to display their health department grade. The A, B or C designations are intended to shame operators into adopting better hygiene practices and to increase public awareness of health in food preparation.
New York’s health department is also posting the grades on its website. Under the system, restaurants that earn A grades will be inspected annually, those graded B or C will be visited more frequently.
New York isn’t the first big city to grade restaurants—Los Angeles operators have been subject to a similar policy for more than a decade. Are other communities likely to follow suit? Possibly. New York in recent years has been on the cutting edge of widespread efforts to regulate restaurant practices, from use of trans fats to menu labeling. Stay tuned.
If you’d like more details about New York’s latest regulations, check out a recent interview that Food Management editor, John Lawn, did with Elliott Marcus, associate commissioner for the health department.
Related article: Read Food Management's Food Safety: Grading NYC's New Health Inspection Policy article