An A on the Door and a Risk Factor on the Report

Walk into almost any restaurant in Raleigh and the card by the door says A. Pull that restaurant’s last inspection report and, more often than not, the inspector marked at least one item in the section headed “Foodborne Illness Risk Factors.” Both are true at once, and neither is hiding the other. They answer different questions.

In the Wake County records this site counts, 83.1% of 21,303 inspections of restaurants and food stands marked at least one risk factor out of compliance. That is the ordinary result of an inspection here.

How the grade is reached

The grade comes from a score, and the thresholds are in state rule. An establishment that earns at least “90 percent shall receive a grade A,” “80 percent and less than 90 percent shall receive a grade B,” and “70 percent and less than 80 percent shall receive a grade C.” Below that there is no grade to post: “Permits shall be immediately revoked” for “a score of less than 70 percent.”

Ten points is a lot of room. The rule lists all 56 items on the form and caps each one at between one and four points, so it takes several marked items to reach ten. And the full value is often not taken. For the more serious classes of item, the rule says they “may be corrected during the inspection and no more than one-half of the total point value shall be deducted,” provided the same violation was not written up last time and the correction is recorded on the form. A cook moves a tray back into the cooler while the inspector is standing there, and the item costs half its points.

So a restaurant can have two or three risk factors marked and still score in the high 90s. The A is an honest summary of the score. It was never a claim that nothing was found.

The two halves of the form

North Carolina’s inspection form is split down the middle, and the form defines its own terms. On the left: “Risk factors: Contributing factors that increase the chance of developing foodborne illness,” and “Public Health Interventions: Control measures to prevent foodborne illness or injury.” On the right: “Good Retail Practices: Preventative measures to control the addition of pathogens, chemicals, and physical objects into foods.”

The state’s instructions to inspectors say where the left-hand list comes from. Risk factors “are food preparation practices and employee behaviors most commonly reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as contributing factors in foodborne illness outbreaks,” and they “include: Food from Unsafe Sources, Improper Holding Temperatures, Inadequate Cooking, Contaminated Equipment, and Poor Personal Hygiene.” The instructions add that “these items are prominent on the Food Establishment Inspection Report because maintaining these items in compliance is vital to preventing foodborne illness.”

This site counts whether an inspection marked at least one item in that left-hand section. It is a blunt measure: a single marked item counts the same as five. It is also the state’s own category, which is why we use it rather than a score cut-off of our choosing. The grade could not do the job, because nearly every inspection ends in an A and a figure built on it would put every chain and the county at almost the same number.

What the small boxes mean

Beside each item marked out of compliance, an inspector can tick up to three more boxes, and the state’s instructions define them. CDI is Corrected During Inspection: it “indicates that all violations cited under that particular item number have been corrected and verified before completing the inspection.” VR is Verification Required, which “indicates correction is warranted within 10 calendar days.” R is a repeat: it “indicates that the same violation under a particular item number was cited on the last inspection report.”

The instructions also tell inspectors when to arrive. “Establishments should be inspected at the time processes are ongoing,” and the time of inspection “should vary to capture the processes that occur at the onset or end of operation such as cooling, receiving of foods, etc.” An inspection is meant to catch a kitchen at work, which is one reason a marked item is a common result.

A restaurant can ask to be graded again

A grade is not fixed until the next routine visit. “Upon request of the permit holder or his or her representative a reinspection shall be made,” and where the request is made “for the purpose of raising the alphabetical grade,” the county “shall make an unannounced inspection within 15 calendar days from the date of the request.” Wake County’s file types each visit as an inspection or a re-inspection. This site leaves re-inspections out, so a second attempt recorded that way does not count towards a chain’s figure.

Why the records here start in October 2021

On October 1, 2021, North Carolina moved to a new edition of the inspection form, and the items were renumbered. On the current form the risk factor section is items 1 to 29. On the one before it, the same section ended at item 27. Counting one numbering across both forms would quietly drop or add items, so this site starts on the new form’s first day and stops its data pull if the numbering changes again.

Reading the chain figures

13 chains have enough inspections to chart in Wake County. 10 sit clearly under the county rate, 3 are too close to call, and none sits clearly over it. The lowest rate on the chart is Starbucks at 50.9%, between 46.3% and 55.4%, and the highest is Subway at 86.0%, between 82.0% and 89.1%.

Those numbers look high beside figures from other places on this site, and they are not comparable with them. Wake County’s figure counts a common finding. A place that counts failed inspections will show single digits for the same chain. Each figure means something only against its own county’s rate, which here is 83.1%.

Sources

• North Carolina Administrative Code, 15A NCAC 18A .2662 (grading) and .2661 (inspections and reinspections) — the grade thresholds, the point cap on each item, the half-deduction rule and the 15-day reinspection.
• NC Department of Health and Human Services, Food Establishment Inspection Report — the form’s two sections, its definitions, and the item numbers.
• NC Department of Health and Human Services, Instructions for Marking the Food Establishment Inspection Report (November 2019 edition) — where the risk factors come from, the CDI, VR and R boxes, and when inspections should take place. It was written for the earlier form, so its item numbers differ from today’s.
• Chain figures are computed from the same committed snapshot as the Raleigh and Wake County page; the method is on the methodology page.

Raleigh and Wake County data: Contains data from Wake County Government's open data portal, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). FastFoodFact grouped the county's inspection records by chain and counted them; the county did not make or review these figures. Wake County states that it shall not be held liable for any errors in these data, and that primary sources must be consulted for verification.

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 North Carolina's inspection form, its marking instructions and the state's grading rules.