How fast-food chains do when the inspector shows up.
Find a chain and see how its restaurants did on routine health inspections, next to every other restaurant in the same city or state. Every figure comes from that government’s own records, with the number of inspections behind it.
Records through Sep 19, 2026
What the records show
Mostly, chains record fewer problems than the restaurants around them. Of 53 chain-and-place results with enough inspections to chart, 47 came in under the local rate for all restaurants, six could not be told apart from it, and none came in over.
That is not only good management. A coffee counter handles far less raw food than a kitchen that fries chicken, so part of the gap is the menu.
How to read a row
The tall line in each column is every restaurant in that place. Each bar is the range a chain’s real rate probably falls in, and the short tick on it is the rate we measured. A bar to the left of the line means fewer inspections with the problem than the local norm.
- Clearly under the local rate
- Too close to the local rate to call
- Clearly over the local rate
Bars that overlap each other are too close to call as well, which is why nothing here is numbered first to last. Rows run from the chains we can chart in the most places to the fewest, then A to Z.
Florida
Share of routine inspections that recorded at least one high-priority violation.
All restaurants: 58.2% of 267,258
Jul 2023 to Sep 19, 2026. Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation
New York City
Share of routine inspections that scored 14 or more points, so did not earn an A on the first visit.
All restaurants: 40.2% of 44,261
Jan 2023 to Sep 17, 2026. NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Chicago
Share of routine inspections that ended in a Fail.
All restaurants: 24.4% of 38,828
Jan 2019 to Sep 16, 2026. Chicago Department of Public Health
What this does not show
- Which place is cleaner. Each place counts a different thing, named at the top of its column, so a Florida figure and a Chicago figure can’t be set against each other. Compare chains down a column, never numbers across one.
- Anything about one restaurant. A figure describes that chain’s locations in that place over those years. It is not a statement about the brand everywhere, and it is not a warning about the one near you.
- Follow-up and complaint visits. Only routine inspections count, and only the first visit. Inspectors return to restaurants that already had a problem, so counting those visits would stack the numbers.
- Small samples. A chain with fewer than 100 routine inspections in a place is listed without a bar, marked “too few” with the number we found.
- Shared kitchens. A location recorded under two chain names, such as a combined KFC and Taco Bell, is counted for neither.
Why only three places
The United States has no national inspection database. Every state, county or city runs its own programme and publishes its own way, and many publish nothing usable: of the first ten sources we checked, five were dead, years out of date or behind a login. A place is added when its government publishes every routine inspection, keeps the file current and allows reuse. New York State, Austin and Delaware are next.
These are public records, summarized. They are not a safety rating of any restaurant and not advice about where to eat.