Fast-food chains in Austin, by city inspection records

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 measured rates between 0.9% and 5.0%. Sonic and Subway sit between 23.2% and 27.3%. The highest plausible rate in the first group is 10.0% and the lowest plausible rate in the second is 16.4%, so that gap is real. Inside each group the ranges overlap, and the records do not support any order.

Whataburger: 1 in 107. That is the whole basis of the lowest rate on the page. With so few inspections under 90, the measured rate barely moves 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 (98) and Wendy's (83) are just under the 100 we require. Because the file rolls forward, its start date moves each month and older inspections drop out.

Analysis 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.

How these figures are made

1. Source. Food Establishment Inspection Scores, published by the Austin Public Health.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. The minimum. A chain needs 100 counted inspections to be charted. Below that it is listed with its count and no bar.
6. Matching names to chains. Restaurant names are matched to chains with a published table of name patterns (version 2026-09-20.3). 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.
7. 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”.

What this does not show

• Management quality on its own. Chains differ in what they handle. 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 describes 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.
• Every restaurant equally. Inspections are scheduled by risk and by past results, so a restaurant with problems is visited more often and appears more often in these counts. That holds for chains and for all restaurants alike.
• How Austin compares with anywhere else. Each place counts a different event under different rules. These figures only make sense next to other figures from Austin.

Informational only. These are public records, summarized; they are not a safety rating of any restaurant and not professional advice. Last reviewed: September 2026.