What an Unsatisfactory Inspection Means in King County

Unsatisfactory sounds like a verdict. In King County it is a threshold, and a low one. Public Health — Seattle & King County puts it in one sentence: “Whenever a ‘red critical violation’ is noted, it is called an unsatisfactory inspection.” One red violation, of any size, and the inspection carries the label.

That is why 35.6% of the 37,914 routine inspections this site counts, across every food service establishment in the county’s file, came back Unsatisfactory. It is a common result rather than a rare one, and reading it as “this place failed” gets the county’s system backwards.

What red covers, and what it is worth

Red critical violations, in the county’s words, “occur when an inspector finds a problem in food preparation, cooking, cooling, or the temperature of food that could lead to a food borne illness.” Elsewhere the county lists them as controlling temperature, cooling food properly, washing hands and using utensils instead of bare hands on ready-to-eat food, storing food, and serving practices. Blue violations “are generally cleanliness issues, like clean floors, walls, and ceilings,” which the county says “are not likely to directly contribute to food borne illness.”

Reds are not equal to each other. “The violation points for each item range from 5 to 25,” and the county is careful about what that arithmetic means: “a red critical violation worth 25 points may create more risk than a combination of smaller violations that add up to 25.” The point scale, it adds, “is used statewide and was developed by a panel of food safety experts from several health departments.”

This site counts whether an inspection was marked Unsatisfactory, not how many points it carried. That is a deliberately blunt measure, and its bluntness is the tradeoff: it treats a 5-point handwashing lapse the same as a 25-point temperature failure. It is also the measure the county itself publishes as a result, which makes it consistent across every establishment in the file.

The thresholds that actually bite

An Unsatisfactory inspection does not, on its own, bring anyone back. “The inspector only returns for a follow-up inspection if there are more than 35 total ‘red critical’ points.” Below that, “the inspector looks at the seriousness of the violation(s) and the history of the establishment,” and typically, “if the violation is a one-time occurrence, education or technical assistance during that routine inspection is all that is necessary.”

Closure sits far higher again. Inspectors close an establishment when it is “found to have 90 or more ‘red critical’ points or more than 120 total points.” Between a single red violation and a closure there is a wide band of ordinary operation, and almost every Unsatisfactory inspection lives in it.

Red items also tend to be fixed on the spot: “Red critical items found during the inspection must be corrected immediately,” with the county’s own examples being reheating a food to 165°F, refrigerating it, or discarding it. The label records a condition an inspector walked in on, not one that persisted.

How often inspectors come

“There are about 12,500 permitted food service establishments in Seattle and King County. The majority of these establishments have two unannounced inspections per year,” carried out by roughly 40 inspectors. This site counts those routine visits, at establishments holding the county’s General Food Services permit, and leaves out return and educational inspections — educational visits are not inspections at all, and the county notes that no violations are recorded on them.

Reading the chain figures

11 chains have enough counted inspections to chart here. 9 sit clearly below the county rate, 1 cannot be separated from it, and 1 sit clearly above it. A chain above the county rate is a chain whose whole 95% range falls over it — the one case where the records genuinely do distinguish, and the site marks it accordingly.

Starbucks has the most inspections on file, 930, putting it between 7.4% and 11.0%. Part of that gap is the work: red violations concentrate in cooking, cooling, holding and bare-hand contact, and an espresso counter runs fewer of those steps than a kitchen assembling meals to order. The county rate on the same chart is computed over every kind of food service establishment, including ones that do far more cooking than any chain here.

Sources

• Public Health — Seattle & King County, About the Food Safety Program — the definition of an unsatisfactory inspection, the 5-to-25 point range, the 35-point follow-up rule, the closure thresholds and the inspection schedule.
• Public Health — Seattle & King County, About the inspection reporting system — what red critical and blue violations cover, and the requirement that red items be corrected immediately.
• Chain figures are computed from the same committed snapshot as the Seattle and King County 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 Public Health - Seattle & King County's published inspection rules.