UTAH (ABC4) – With a lot of people moving to Utah in recent years, some people may question things that are different from other states. One example is restaurants displaying their health inspection score to customers with a numerical or letter score.
In many states, restaurants are required to dispay their health inspection score in an area that is visible to customers, but that’s not the case in Utah.
According to the Salt Lake County Health Department, the only official source for Salt Lake County Health Department inspection information is the ”Inspection Reports” button on the website.
Every food service establishment is assigned a category called “risk level” based on the establishment’s menu and volume of meals served. There are four risk levels in Salt Lake County, numbered 1 through 4. SLCoHD’s Food Protection Bureau has received national recognition for its risk-based scoring system and real-time rankings, which are more thorough and transparent to the public than a simple letter grade or score.
The point total accumulated during an inspection is the inspection “score,” so—like golf—the lower the score, the better.
The higher the risk level, the more frequently the establishment will receive a routine, unscheduled (i.e., “surprise”) inspection according to the approximate frequency below.
- Risk Level 1: once per year
- Risk Level 2: every 9 months
- Risk Level 3: twice per year
- Risk Level 4: three times per year
They also conduct inspections based on complaints from the public.
