Why an A in the Window Is Not an A on the First Visit

Almost every restaurant window in New York City holds an A. That is not because almost every inspection produces one. It is because the city grades some inspections and not others, and the ungraded ones are mostly the bad ones.

The Health Department is direct about it: “A restaurant has two chances to earn an A in every inspection cycle. If it doesn’t earn an A on the first inspection, it’s scored but ungraded. An inspector goes back to the restaurant unannounced, typically within a month, to inspect it again and the re-inspection is graded.” An initial inspection scoring 14 points or more is listed by the department among inspections that are “scored but not graded.”

So the card in the window is a fair summary of where a restaurant ended up. It is not a record of how the first visit went. That first visit is what this site counts.

How the points work

New York does not score on a curve or a checklist total. Each violation an inspector cites carries points, and the points depend on the risk. In the department’s words:

• A public health hazard — “such as failing to keep food at the right temperature” — “triggers a minimum of 7 points.” If it cannot be corrected before the inspection ends, the department “may close the restaurant until it’s fixed.”
• A critical violation, “for example, serving raw food such as a salad without properly washing it first, carries a minimum of 5 points.”
• A general violation, “such as not properly sanitizing cooking utensils, receives at least 2 points.”

On top of that, “inspectors assign additional points to reflect the extent of the violation,” on a condition level from 1 to 5. The department’s own example: one contaminated food item is condition level 1 and generates 7 points; four or more is condition level 4 and produces 10.

The totals then become grades. “Restaurants with a score between 0 and 13 points earn an A, those with 14 to 27 points receive a B and those with 28 or more a C.” Because the lowest-scoring single hazard is worth 7 points, two of them put a restaurant into B territory on their own.

What this site counts, and why

This site counts initial cycle inspections only, and records whether the restaurant scored 14 or more — that is, whether it failed to earn an A on the first visit. Re-inspections, complaint visits and pre-permit inspections are left out.

The reason is the two-chance design. A file that includes re-inspections counts the restaurants that already scored badly once, a second time, after they have been warned and have had roughly a month to fix things. Mixing the two produces a number that describes the enforcement process rather than the kitchens. The first unannounced visit of a cycle is the closest thing the file has to a like-for-like sample.

Across 2023–2026, 40.2% of 44,261 initial inspections of New York City restaurants scored 14 or more. That is the striking part of the city’s system: roughly two in every five first visits do not produce an A, in a city where nearly every window shows one.

What the chain figures say

11 chains have the 100 initial inspections this site requires before drawing a range. 10 of them sit clearly below the city’s 40.2% rate — their whole 95% range falls under it.

Starbucks, with 734 initial inspections, records 10.1% (8.1% to 12.5%). Dunkin' has the most inspections of any chain here, 1,738, which buys the narrowest range in the city: 16.2% to 19.8%. A range that tight is describing a chain’s system rather than a handful of operators.

Part of that distance from the city rate is the menu rather than the management. Points in New York are concentrated in food temperature, raw-food handling and vermin, and a counter that pours coffee and warms pastry runs fewer of those risks than a kitchen cooking to order. The city rate on the same chart includes every full-service restaurant in New York, which does far more cooking than any chain here.

And no figure here describes one restaurant. For a particular address, the Health Department publishes the inspection history itself, which is the only record that can answer that question.

Sources

• NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, How We Score and Grade — point values, violation categories, condition levels, the A/B/C ranges, and which inspections are graded.
• NYC Health, Letter Grading for Restaurants — “An inspection score of 0 to 13 is an A, 14 to 27 points is a B, and 28 or more points is a C.”
• NYC Health, Food Establishment Inspections — “The Health Department conducts unannounced inspections of restaurants at least once a year.”
• Chain figures are computed from the same committed snapshot as the New York City 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 NYC Health Department's published scoring and grading rules.