Kitsap diners could get a clearer look at restaurant health inspections under new plan

Restaurants in Kitsap County could be required to display a safety rating, telling customers how they have fared on recent health inspections, under a new program being floated by the health district.

If adopted, each food establishment would receive one of four ratings – ranging from "Best" to "Great," "Ok," and "Needs to Improve" – based on an average of its health inspections results over the past two years.

Food establishments would need to prominently post those ratings near their front door, window or service counter. The poster includes a rating in large print with an emoticon and a small QR code linking to a list of violations.

In a presentation to the Kitsap Public Health District Board on Tuesday, Dayna Katula, food and living environment program manager at the health department, said the implementation is about transparency. Code violations are already publicly available online, but the new rating system will provide consumers with immediate information when they are choosing where to eat, she said.

“The main goal of our program is to reduce the amount of foodborne illness in Kitsap,” she said. “People still do get sick from food and to us that’s unacceptable because it’s avoidable.”

According to data presented by the health department, If the program were implemented today, 25% of businesses would fall in the "Best" category, meaning they’ve had no violations over the past couple years.

The majority of businesses, 52%, would fall in the "Great" category, with a few violations in the last two years.

Only 4% of businesses would fall into either the "Okay" or "Needs to Improve." The bottom category is reserved for establishments on probation who have received a significant number of critical violations during a recent inspection. Once off probation, the establishment would be re-ranked to one of the other three categories based on their recent averages.

The remaining 15% of businesses have not been around long enough to receive a score.

Kitsap’s rating system is expected to be rolled out over the next year through an education period and officially launch in July 2025. It follows a similar rating system implemented by the Seattle-King County Public Health District six years ago. Pierce County also created a rating system in 2022.

Citing a survey from Minnesota , Katula said the rating system model has shown widespread support among consumers and reductions in outbreaks, complaints and reinspections.

“The biggest driver of us wanting to do this is to use it as an incentivizer  to get food operators to improve the sanitary conditions in their food establishments,” she said. “They do a really good job, but the reality is (health inspectors) are only in food establishments once or twice a year, and that’s not enough to promise food safety.”

Monica Downen, a member of the Kitsap Food Advisory Council who helped draft the rating system, said it provides an updated, consumer-friendly way to inform people about how restaurants are performing. Food violations, she said, can often be confusing or difficult for the public to understand.

Downen, who also owns Monica’s Waterfront Bakery and Cafe in Silverdale, says while the rating system is focused on improving public health for consumers, it does not appear to have any glaring downsides for business owners.

“I feel like it’s maybe a benefit to a business in that it holds us accountable,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Kitsap diners could get a clearer look at restaurant health inspections under new plan