Report Says D.C. Ought to Put Letter Grades in Restaurant Windows

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has put out a report that says that many cities are not doing enough to inform citizens about the results of health inspections at restaurants. Predictably, the District is pretty high on the list of cities that the center feels need to be doing more.

The report scolds D.C. for forcing people who want to obtain restaurant inspection reports to file Freedom of Information Act requests. CSPI also says the ratio of inspectors to restaurants is not good: we only employ 21 inspectors for all of the city's 5,000 restaurants.

The D.C. Health Department released a statement that WJLA posted online (PDF), which doesn't say much of any substance. They told the news channel that patrons can always ask to see a restaurant's latest report when they are there, which should be kept on-hand by the restaurant. Closed or suspended restaurants are also published once a week in the Washington Post.

We agree with the CSPI, however, that there's just no need for patrons to do that sort of extra work to find out how a restaurant rated on their last inspection. Many municipalities have adopted the relatively simple method of posting large letter grades in the front window of every restaurant, so that customers can easily see how they did. In cities like Los Angeles, where this practice has been in place for years, restaurants with grades below a 'B' are often known to go out of business relatively quickly if they don't clean up their acts. It's hard to see a big, blue 'C' in the window of your favorite lunch counter and still walk in and eat there.

Do you think the D.C. Health Department ought to adopt posting food safety letter grades in restaurant windows, as the CSPI recommends?

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