Restaurant Letter Grade System Reform

As Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration is looking to eliminate letter grades for public schools, the NYC Hospitality Alliance  believed it is a good opportunity to urge City Hall to focus on the letter-grade system in restaurants. The reasoning behind removing the letter grades in public schools was that it affected reputations and could feel punitive, which is the same case for restaurants. Letter grades can be misleading for diners as they only reflect a restaurant’s sanitary condition in the period of time that they were inspected.

The point allocation is also something that the NYC Hospitality Alliance believes should be rethought so that the point values fairly reflect their impact on food safety. Another suggested reform is to eliminate points for non-food-safety-related violations as well as seeing the adjudication process  through to the end before scheduling a second inspection. Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, fully believes that the restaurant industry believes in high food-safety standards and would do a better job of upholding these standards if they were not being slapped with fines and punitive letters from a letter grade system that is in need of a reform.

To read more about how the restaurant grading system currently works and what could improve the current system, click here