Austin Publishes the Score but Not the Scoring

An Austin inspection produces a score out of 100, where higher is better, and the city sorts those scores into three categories in its published data: 90 and over (Green), 70 to 89 (Yellow), and under 70 (Red). This site counts how often a routine inspection landed outside the top category — under 90.

What the city does not publish, as far as we can find, is the rulebook behind the number: which findings deduct how many points, and what follows a low score. The inspection report form that would answer it is linked from several places and, as of September 2026, those links return errors. That gap is worth stating plainly, because a score with no published derivation is harder to interpret than a result with a one-line definition, and Austin’s is the least self-explanatory measure on this site.

What does govern it

Austin’s inspectors work under the Texas Food Establishment Rules, the state’s adoption of the FDA Food Code at 25 Texas Administrative Code chapter 228. Those rules classify every requirement as a priority item, a priority foundation item or a core item, in descending order of how directly it bears on foodborne illness — the same three-way split several other places on this site use, under various names.

The state rules also set how often an inspector comes. Under section 228.244, “the regulatory authority shall inspect each food establishment based upon an assessment of the food establishment’s history of compliance with this chapter and the potential for causing foodborne illness,” weighing past nonconformance with priority and priority foundation items, repeat core-item violations, valid complaints, and “the hazards associated with the particular foods that are prepared, stored, or served.” Frequency is a judgement about risk, not a fixed calendar.

So the score is a subtraction from 100 driven by findings weighted roughly along those lines. Without the city’s published weights we will not put numbers on that sentence, and this site does not describe Austin’s deductions in any more detail than the evidence supports.

Why the line is drawn at 90

Using the city’s own Green boundary is deliberate. The alternative — counting inspections that scored under 70, the failing line — is unusable for comparing chains: those are a fraction of one percent of all routine inspections, so almost every chain would show zero and the ranges would swamp the differences. The 90 line is a category the city itself publishes, and it separates enough inspections to measure.

It also means the Austin figure answers a softer question than the Florida or Seattle ones. “Scored under 90” is not “recorded a serious violation.” It is “lost more than ten points, from a pool that includes minor ones.” Comparing that share to another place’s rate would be meaningless, and this site never does.

Reading the Austin figures

Austin’s file is a small one. Only 7 chains reach the 100 counted routine inspections needed to draw a range at all, out of 31 that appear in the file. The rest are listed unranked, with their counts shown, rather than charted on evidence too thin to carry a bar.

Across the file, 33.6% of 20,455 routine inspections of Austin food establishments scored under 90. 6 of the charted chains sit clearly below that. 1 chain has a range that includes the city rate, so the records cannot say it scores under 90 more or less often than an ordinary Austin establishment.

Note the noun. Austin’s file covers food establishments, not restaurants alone, which is why this site never writes “all restaurants” for Austin. And as everywhere here, part of the distance between a chain and the local rate is what the kitchen does rather than how well it is run.

Sources

• Texas Department of State Health Services, Texas Food Establishment Rules (25 TAC chapter 228) — the priority, priority foundation and core classification, and the risk-based inspection requirement at section 228.244.
• City of Austin, Food Establishment Inspection Scores — the score, the Green/Yellow/Red categories, and the routine versus follow-up inspection types this site filters on.
• Chain figures are computed from the same committed snapshot as the Austin page; the method is on the methodology page.

Informational only. This is a reading of public inspection records, not food-safety, legal or dining advice, and no figure here is a grade of any individual restaurant. A figure describes what inspectors recorded across a set of visits in one place over one period — not a brand, and not the location near you.

Last reviewed: September 2026 · Against the Texas Food Establishment Rules and the City of Austin's published inspection dataset.