Why some cities post grades in windows — and some don't
The public-posting debate: what happened when grades went up in windows, and why most of the US still keeps reports in filing cabinets.
Walk past a restaurant in Los Angeles or New York City and the inspection grade is in the window, by law. Walk past one in most of the rest of the country and the only way to learn its inspection history is to go looking — which is, frankly, why CleanPlate exists.
The posting experiment
Los Angeles County pioneered mandatory window grades in 1998; New York City followed in 2010. The appeal is obvious: the market does the enforcement. A B in the window costs real customers, so operators fight to fix issues quickly. Public-health researchers found LA's rollout was associated with measurable drops in hospitalizations for foodborne illness — one of the stronger pieces of evidence that transparency itself improves food safety.
Critics note the flip side: grade-chasing can put pressure on inspector consistency, and appeals processes can slow-walk bad grades. The debate is real, but the transparency direction has mostly won — placard and posting systems keep spreading.
Everywhere else
Most US jurisdictions still publish inspection results only as records — on a portal, in a database, or on request. The information is public; it just isn't visible at the moment of decision. Aggregating those scattered public records into something you can check from the sidewalk in ten seconds is exactly the gap this site fills, for every covered city, using the same official data the window card would show.