When we look at a new restaurant, we often start off looking at the eatery’s reviews. There’s now a feature in an app with health scores for establishments in Iowa. The health scores would be in the “Yelp!” app.Starting Thursday, there will be a 1 to 100 grade that hopes to give customers a sense of how compliant a place is with the health department. How the scores are determined is based on previous inspection results and gives an estimate. Yelp! partnered with an analytics company to kickstart this effort.Jessica Dunker, president of the Iowa Restaurant Association, is sounding the alarm over this system. She says the state already has a good system where critical violations at establishments are published publicly and this might turn away potential customers based on inaccurate data. “The worry is at a time when restaurants continue to recover, continue to struggle, that grades assigned by people not even in the state of Iowa and may or may not understand how inspection reports work,” Dunker said. Dunker is also concerned about the way the data is presented, such as how quickly establishments fix a problem. She also says an inspection represents a snapshot in time and not an overall assessment of what a restaurant does every day.More from Nicole Tam:
When we look at a new restaurant, we often start off looking at the eatery’s reviews. There’s now a feature in an app with health scores for establishments in Iowa. The health scores would be in the “Yelp!” app.
Starting Thursday, there will be a 1 to 100 grade that hopes to give customers a sense of how compliant a place is with the health department. How the scores are determined is based on previous inspection results and gives an estimate. Yelp! partnered with an analytics company to kickstart this effort.
Jessica Dunker, president of the Iowa Restaurant Association, is sounding the alarm over this system. She says the state already has a good system where critical violations at establishments are published publicly and this might turn away potential customers based on inaccurate data.
“The worry is at a time when restaurants continue to recover, continue to struggle, that grades assigned by people not even in the state of Iowa and may or may not understand how inspection reports work,” Dunker said.
Dunker is also concerned about the way the data is presented, such as how quickly establishments fix a problem. She also says an inspection represents a snapshot in time and not an overall assessment of what a restaurant does every day.
More from Nicole Tam:
