What do you think about our weekly restaurant inspection reports? Are they useful?

I think people should be able to understand when restaurants operate in an unsafe and/or unsanitary manner. Too much is unseen by the public beneath the veil of "smoke and mirrors" of the dining room. Bravo.

Mr. Tim,
Thank you for your post on restaurant inspection scores. It is very important for customers to know if an establishment has good food safety practices. By having good food safety practices it reduces the customers exposure to a possible food- borne disease. According to the CDC food-borne diseases are responsible for 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths annually. Research also shows that food-borne diseases cost the United States between $10 billion and $83 billion in pain and suffering, loss of productivity, lawsuits, medical expenses and death.
After working in the industry for years as a food safety consultant I truly think poor scores can be affiliated with one of the following:
1. After managers are trained and certified in food safety; they fail to come back into the unit and share that knowledge with the employees.
2. No employee level food safety training program.
3. Managers are not able to transition from theory to application. Meaning they can pass the food safety training class/exam (theory) but have a very hard time with implementing in their unit what they actuallly learned in class (application).

Good job again Mr. Tim.

Eat safe,
Terri R. Waller, MPA, CFSM, HACCP