Fast-food chains in Louisville, by health department records
See how often a regular health inspection ended in a C, the failing grade, at each fast-food chain’s restaurants in Louisville and Jefferson County, next to the rate for every food service establishment in the county.
Covers: All of Jefferson County, which Louisville Metro's health department inspects as one jurisdiction.
The short answer
Three of the 13 chains came in under the local rate.
- 3under the local rate
- 9too close to call
- 1over the local rate
The local rate is the tall line in the chart below. Across all food service establishments in Louisville, 5.0% of routine inspections ended in a C grade, meaning the restaurant failed the inspection and a follow-up visit was required.
Chain by chain
Each bar is the range a chain’s real rate probably falls in: the fewer inspections, the wider the bar. The short tick is the rate we measured. Bars that overlap are too close to call, so rows run from the lowest measured rate to the highest for reading only.
- Under the local rate
- Too close to call
- Over the local rate
Why the chains are not numbered first to last. The lowest rate on file is Chick-fil-A at 0.0% and the highest is White Castle at 11.1%. Those two really are apart: their ranges do not touch. But only 0 of the 13 chains can be told apart from the chain in the middle of the list. The rest are too close to it to call.
18 more chains with too few inspections to chart
A chain needs 100 routine inspections on file here before it gets a bar. These have fewer: Little Caesars (94), Panera (92), KFC (77), Dunkin' (71), Wingstop (68), Chipotle (61), Raising Cane's (51), Popeyes (49), Five Guys (46), Panda Express (45), Zaxby's (36), Jersey Mike's (31), Sonic (28), Wendy's (28), Culver's (19), Firehouse Subs (18), Hardee's (18), Jack in the Box (16).
What stands out
Most chains here are too close to call, and that is the finding. A C is rare in Louisville: 5.0% of 19,067 regular inspections ended in one. At that rate a chain with a hundred-odd inspections has a handful of failures on file, and a handful makes a wide bar. 9 of the 13 chains on the chart have a bar that crosses the local rate. Read those as “these records cannot say”, not as “the same as everyone else”.
Chick-fil-A, Taco Bell and Starbucks are clearly under it. Their whole ranges sit below 5.0%. Chick-fil-A has no C at all on file: 0 of 113. Zero on file is not zero risk, which is why the bar still reaches 3.3%.
White Castle is the one chain clearly over the local rate. 16 of its 144 regular inspections ended in a C, a rate of 11.1% with a likely range of 7.0% to 17.3%, against 5.0% for food service establishments in the county. A C means a critical violation was found and an inspector came back; it does not mean a restaurant was closed. The figure sums up the chain’s Jefferson County locations over five years. It says nothing about White Castle anywhere else, and it is not a statement about any one restaurant.
Subway has the most inspections on file. 28 of 423, a rate of 6.6% between 4.6% and 9.4%. Even with more inspections behind it than any other chain here, its range still takes in the local rate.
The local rate includes every kind of kitchen. The 5.0% figure covers everything the department permits as food service: full-service restaurants, bars and taverns, coffee shops and counters. A chain that fries chicken and a chain that pours coffee are both set against that one number, so part of any gap is the menu.
Restaurants that closed are missing. The department’s list of establishments holds current permits only, so inspections of restaurants that have since closed cannot be matched to a name and drop out, for chains and for the local rate alike. If restaurants that fail more often also close more often, every figure here runs a little low. Little Caesars (94), Panera (92), KFC (77) and Dunkin' (71) are just short of the 100 it takes to draw a bar and are listed without one.
Written September 2026. The figures in it are read from the current records, so they move when the records do.
How inspections work in Louisville
Louisville and Jefferson County merged into one government in 2003, and one agency, the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, inspects food service across the whole county. Its published table of establishments sets a routine inspection interval of 180 days for nearly every one, so a restaurant can expect a regular inspection about twice a year.
Inspections are scored under Kentucky’s food regulation: “The rating score of the establishment shall be the total of the point value for all violations subtracted from 100.” The score is not what decides a C. The regulation says that “regardless of the rating score of the establishment, all violations of priority items shall be corrected within a time period not to exceed ten (10) days,” and in the department’s records a C goes with exactly that: a critical violation and a follow-up visit. Most inspections graded C still scored 85 or higher.
We checked the reading against the department’s own files. It publishes a separate list described as “violations recorded against permitted restaurants that failed inspection.” Every regular inspection graded C that we count appears in that list with a critical violation beside it, and almost no inspection graded A does.
A C is a long way short of a closure. Under the same regulation a score under 70 brings a notice of intent to suspend the permit, and a permit is suspended on the spot only when “an imminent public health hazard exists” or an inspection “reveals a rating score of less than sixty (60).”
What this can’t tell you
- Who runs the better kitchen. Chains handle different food. 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 sums up that chain’s locations in Louisville over this period. It is not a statement about the brand elsewhere and not a warning about the one near you.
- Whether every restaurant got equal attention. Inspections are scheduled by risk and by past results, so a restaurant with problems is visited more often and shows up more often in these counts. That holds for chains and for all food service establishments alike.
- How Louisville compares with anywhere else. Each place counts a different thing under different rules. These figures only make sense next to other figures from Louisville.
How we counted
- Source. Environmental Health Bulk Data: Inspections and Establishments, published by the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness. Pulled September 21, 2026.
- What counts. Only regular inspections of establishments permitted as food service; follow-up and complaint inspections are left out, as are school, day care and hospital kitchens, mobile units, caterers, commissaries, and the numbered concession stands inside the KFC Yum! Center arena. Inspectors go back to restaurants that already had a problem, so counting return visits would stack the numbers.
- The figure. For each chain, the number of those inspections that ended in a C grade, meaning the restaurant failed the inspection and a follow-up visit was required, divided by all of them. “All food service establishments” is the same sum over everything in the file, chains included.
- 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.
- The minimum. A chain needs 100 counted inspections to be charted. Below that it is listed with its count and no bar.
- Matching names to chains. Restaurant names are matched to chains with a published table of name patterns (version 2026-09-20.4). 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.
- Reuse. Published under the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License. Louisville Metro's open data terms ask anyone republishing a dataset to identify its source, version and any modifications, which this page and its data file do.
The full method, including the formula for the range, is on the methodology page.
Scoring, correction deadlines and suspension: 902 KAR 45:005, Kentucky food establishment regulation, sections 6 and 7. The inspection interval is the department’s own field in its establishments table; the list of failed inspections is its Inspection Violations of Failed Restaurants file. We count inspections typed REGULAR at establishments permitted as food service; follow-up and complaint inspections are separate types and are left out. The file holds a rolling five years. A chain needs 100 inspections to be charted.
Informational only. These are public records, summarized; they are not a safety rating of any restaurant and not professional advice. Last reviewed: September 2026.
Quote or download these figures
You may quote any figure on this page. Please credit FastFoodFact with a link, keep the count and the range with the rate, and don’t set a figure from one place against a figure from another: each place counts a different thing.
FastFoodFact, "Fast-food chains in Louisville." Counted from Environmental Health Bulk Data: Inspections and Establishments, Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness; routine inspections September 20, 2021 to September 18, 2026, pulled September 21, 2026. https://www.fastfoodfact.com/louisville
The counts as a file: CSV or JSON. Each file covers one place and names its source.
Frequently asked questions
What does a C grade mean on a Louisville restaurant inspection?
It is the failing grade. Louisville Metro's health department grades each regular inspection, and in its records a C goes with an inspection that found a critical violation and needed a follow-up visit. Kentucky's food regulation gives a restaurant no more than ten days to correct a violation of a priority item, whatever its score. A C is not a closure: the state suspends a permit on the spot only for a score under 60 or an imminent health hazard.
How often do Louisville restaurants fail a health inspection?
Not often. In these records, 5.0% of 19,067 regular inspections of food service establishments in Jefferson County ended in a C. That is the rate every chain on this page is compared with. It cannot be read against another place's figure: a Louisville C is not the same event as a Chicago Fail or a Florida high-priority violation.
Which fast-food chain fails the fewest inspections in Louisville?
The lowest rate on file is Chick-fil-A: 0 of its 113 regular inspections ended in a C, a rate of 0.0% with a likely range of 0.0% to 3.3%. Other chains have ranges that overlap it, so this site does not number them first to last. The figure describes that chain's Jefferson County locations over this period, not any single restaurant.
Why are so many chains too close to call in Louisville?
Because a C is rare. With a local rate of 5.0%, a chain with 100 or so inspections has only a handful of failures on file, and a handful cannot pin a rate down. A wide range that crosses the local rate is the honest way to show that. It is not evidence that the chain matches the local rate, only that these records cannot say which side of it the chain is on.
The guide to these records
- A Score of 95 and a Grade of C: How Louisville Inspections Work
A Louisville restaurant can score in the 90s and still be graded C. The score and the letter measure different things: what Kentucky's rule says about each, what a C sets in motion, and how far it is from a closure.
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