Fast food chains in Austin, by city inspection records
See how often routine city inspections scored under 90 at each fast food chain’s Austin restaurants, next to the rate for every food establishment in the city. Austin is the smallest place we cover, so only a handful of chains have enough inspections to chart.
The short answer
Six of the 7 chains came in under the local rate.
- 6under the local rate
- 1too close to call
- 0over the local rate
The local rate is the tall line in the chart below. Across all food establishments in Austin, 33.6% of routine inspections scored under 90, below the city's top category.
Chain by chain
Each bar is the range a chain’s real rate probably falls in: the fewer inspections, the wider the bar. The short tick is the rate we measured. Bars that overlap are too close to call, so rows run from the lowest measured rate to the highest for reading only.
- Under the local rate
- Too close to call
- Over the local rate
Why the chains are not numbered first to last. The lowest rate on file is Whataburger at 0.9% and the highest is Subway at 27.3%. Those two really are apart: their ranges do not touch. But only 2 of the 7 chains can be told apart from the chain in the middle of the list. The rest are too close to it to call.
24 more chains with too few inspections to chart
A chain needs 100 routine inspections on file here before it gets a bar. These have fewer: Jack in the Box (97), Wendy's (82), Chipotle (76), Pizza Hut (64), Papa John's (62), Wingstop (62), Jersey Mike's (54), Chick-fil-A (51), Jimmy John's (51), Popeyes (51), Burger King (50), Panda Express (50), Dairy Queen (38), KFC (35), Panera (35), Raising Cane's (24), Little Caesars (21), Arby's (18), Dunkin' (15), Firehouse Subs (15), Five Guys (14), Shake Shack (7), Zaxby's (7), Culver's (4).
What stands out
The comparison here is wider than restaurants. Austin’s file covers everything the city inspects, from taquerias to grocery stores, convenience stores and school kitchens, and does not label which is which. The 33.6% figure is all of them together. On the other place pages the tall line is restaurants; here it is not, and the two should not be read the same way.
The chains fall into two groups with nothing in between. Whataburger, Starbucks, McDonald's, Taco Bell and Domino's all have rates between 0.9% and 5.1%. Sonic and Subway sit between 22.9% and 27.3%. The highest plausible rate in the first group is 10.2% and the lowest plausible rate in the second is 16.0%, so that gap is real. Inside each group the ranges overlap, and the records cannot put them in any order.
Whataburger: 1 in 107. That is the whole basis of the lowest rate on the page. With so few inspections under 90, one more or one fewer would hardly change the range, which runs from 0.2% to 5.1%. It overlaps the chains next to it.
Subway is level with the city. Its range includes the 33.6% rate for all food establishments, so we cannot say it scores under 90 more or less often than an ordinary establishment in Austin.
Seven chains is a short list. The city publishes a rolling three years, and Austin has only so many of any one chain. Jack in the Box (97) and Wendy's (82) are just under the 100 it takes to draw a bar. Because the file rolls forward, its start date moves each month and older inspections drop out.
Written September 2026. The figures in it are read from the current records, so they move when the records do.
How inspections work in Austin
Food establishments in Austin are inspected by Environmental Health Officers from Austin Public Health, under the Texas Food Establishment Rules and City of Austin codes. Each inspection gets a score out of 100; higher is better.
The city’s published data sorts scores into three categories: 90 and over (Green), 70 to 89 (Yellow), and under 70 (Red). This page counts inspections that fell outside the top category. We chose that line because it is the city’s own, and because scores under 70 are too rare to compare chains on: they are a fraction of one percent of all routine inspections.
We could not find a city publication that sets out how points are deducted or what follows a low score, so this page does not describe either.
What this can’t tell you
- Who runs the better kitchen. Chains handle different food. A coffee counter deals with far less raw food than a kitchen that fries chicken, so part of any gap between chains is the menu.
- Anything about one restaurant. A figure sums up that chain’s locations in Austin over this period. It is not a statement about the brand elsewhere and not a warning about the one near you.
- Whether every restaurant got equal attention. Inspections are scheduled by risk and by past results, so a restaurant with problems is visited more often and shows up more often in these counts. That holds for chains and for all food establishments alike.
- How Austin compares with anywhere else. Each place counts a different thing under different rules. These figures only make sense next to other figures from Austin.
How we counted
- Source. Food Establishment Inspection Scores, published by the Austin Public Health. Pulled October 2, 2026.
- What counts. Only routine inspections; follow-up inspections are left out. Inspectors go back to restaurants that already had a problem, so counting return visits would stack the numbers.
- The figure. For each chain, the number of those inspections that scored under 90, below the city's top category, divided by all of them. “All food establishments” is the same sum over everything in the file, chains included.
- The range. A 95% Wilson score interval. If we could rerun the same period many times, the true rate would land inside a range built this way about 19 times in 20. Fewer inspections means a wider range.
- The minimum. A chain needs 100 counted inspections to be charted. Below that it is listed with its count and no bar.
- Matching names to chains. Restaurant names are matched to chains with a published table of name patterns (version 2026-09-20.4). A location recorded under two chain names, such as a combined KFC and Taco Bell, is counted for neither. If a match is wrong, write to hello@fastfoodfact.com and it will be corrected.
- Reuse. Public domain, per the license field on the City of Austin's dataset.
The full method, including the formula for the range, is on the methodology page.
Who inspects, under which rules, the three-year window and the score categories: the description and the “Inspection Score Category” field of the city’s dataset, linked above. We count rows whose process is “Routine Inspection” and leave out “Follow-Up Inspection”.
Informational only. These are public records, summarized; they are not a safety rating of any restaurant and not professional advice. Last reviewed: September 2026.
Quote or download these figures
You may quote any figure on this page. Please credit FastFoodFact with a link, keep the count and the range with the rate, and don’t set a figure from one place against a figure from another: each place counts a different thing.
FastFoodFact, "Fast food chains in Austin." Counted from Food Establishment Inspection Scores, Austin Public Health; routine inspections October 2, 2023 to September 10, 2026, pulled October 2, 2026. https://www.fastfoodfact.com/austin
The counts as a file: CSV or JSON. Each file covers one place and names its source.
Frequently asked questions
How are Austin restaurant inspections scored?
Austin Public Health gives each inspection a score out of 100, where higher is better, and its published data sorts scores into three categories: 90 and over (Green), 70 to 89 (Yellow) and under 70 (Red). Inspections follow the Texas Food Establishment Rules and City of Austin codes.
What does this page count?
The share of routine inspections that scored under 90, meaning outside the city's top category. Across every food establishment in the city's file that share is 33.6% of 20,357 routine inspections. Follow-up inspections are left out, because they only happen after a problem.
Why does Austin compare chains with all food establishments and not all restaurants?
The city's file covers every kind of food establishment it inspects, including grocery stores, convenience stores and school kitchens, and does not say which is which. We cannot separate restaurants out, so the comparison figure is everything in the file, and the page says so.
Which fast food chain scores best on Austin inspections?
The lowest rate on file is Whataburger: 1 of its 107 routine inspections scored under 90, a rate of 0.9% with a likely range of 0.2% to 5.1%. Several other chains have ranges that overlap it, so this site does not number them first to last. The figure describes that chain's Austin locations over this period, not any single restaurant.
The guide to these records
- Austin Publishes the Score but Not the Scoring
Every Austin inspection carries a number out of 100, sorted into three colour categories. What the city does and does not publish about how that number is reached, and what the state rules say instead.
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