Silicon Valley Start-Up Creates New Restaurant Critique Standard Around Food Health and Safety

CleanScores Web-based Guide to Restaurant Health Inspection Hopes to Decrease Food-Related Illnesses, Hospitalizations, Deaths and Dramatically Increase Restaurant Revenues

(San Francisco, CA - September 2007) - CleanScores, a Bay Area start-up that tracks the official health inspection results of approximately 4,000 restaurants in San Francisco, has recently been created to benefit restaurant goers, restaurateurs and the health community. CleanScores relies on data from environmental health departments and makes that important data easily accessible to the public in a user-friendly manner via its website. CleanScores is quickly gaining popularity in San Francisco as more users and bloggers refer to the "Restaurant's CleanScores" in their reviews.

The site is the brainchild of Phillip Leslie, a Stanford Professor, and Guy Michlin, a Stanford MBA who saw two major problems in our nation's health inspection system – lack of standardization and lack of transparency. “Our database currently covers only 0.3% of U.S. Restaurants,” as Michlin sees it. “If you extrapolate the number of visitors we have today to when we'll have 100% of all restaurants covered, you are talking about millions of visitors a month, which reflects the importance of this issue to the public.”

As CleanScores expands beyond the Bay Area, the self-funded start-up is looking for Venture capital and government grants to finance its expansion.

But CleanScores doesn't stop at the on-line world. They are planning to market CleanScores certificates to the cleanest restaurants in each county – enabling the clean restaurants to prominently share with high health inspection score with their consumers. In a recent test, over 75% of restaurateurs who received the CleanScores certificate in the mail chose to display in their window.

As Jennifer, owner of the popular San Francisco Zazie Cafe says, “We proudly hang the CleanScores certificate next to the Zagat and Michelin plaques because we are proud of our high health inspection score and the fact that we spend a lot of resources to insure our customers eat in a clean and safe environment.”

The founders of CleanScores believe food safety is the forgotten child of the food critique industry and that they are creating a new certification industry by bringing it to center stage. "The statistics are startling – 76 million cases of food-related illnesses; 323,000 hospitalizations; 5,000 deaths. Total annual cost $6.7 billion (CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no5/mead.htm), stated Michlin. “What good does it do to you if you had a great tasty meal but as a result you or one of your family members got sick? Our goal is to make food safety an integral part of each dining decision. Of course, it's not going to replace the Zagat's of the world, but we see it as a key additional component to the dining decision process."

Each county in the U.S. Has its own way of conducting health inspections and its own scoring system. For example, Los Angeles gives scores of A,B,C. In San Francisco, there's a 0-100 scoring system. New York scores from 0-175. Despite the importance of the inspection results, this information is rarely accessible to the public. Some counties don't have websites, while others may be difficult to navigate.

Based on the official health inspection scores, CleanScores took on the challenge of unifying these scores into one national standard and making it easily accessible to the public – both on line and off-line – something the government hasn't been able to do.

"Making our restaurant safety scores widely available and understood by the public is critical for food safety," says Rajiv Bhatia (MD, MPH), head of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. "While our inspectors are diligent in finding the hazards and helping restaurants solve problems, the scores, especially when publicly visible, can really motivate restaurants to take action. CleanScores is serving public safety by making our inspection results even more accessible."

Background

In 1998, Los Angeles County mandated that all restaurants in the county prominently display their health inspection scores in the window. Two years later, Professor Phillip Leslie of Stanford conducted extensive research to examine the effect of the grade cards. After analyzing local hospital logs and IRS revenue data, Leslie concluded that the grade cards had a profound impact on the local restaurant industry. The research showed that following the introduction of grade cards there was a 20% decrease in food-borne illness hospitalizations and that the clean restaurants who received an “A” score experienced a 6% increase in revenues. Total industry revenues rose by 4%.

"Leslie's findings are very important," said Aaron Noveshan, a director of the California Restaurant Association, owner of Culinary Edge consultancy and Pacific Catch restaurants. "With its unique set of data, CleanScores has the potential of becoming a very important player in our $650 billion industry. Leslie's research shows that people in LA reacted to the food safety information, changed their consumption habits accordingly and made health scores a part of their dining decision. If CleanScores manages to create a similar affect on a national level, it would have a huge impact on our industry."

Web Site Features
Browse restaurants by name and address
Browse best and worst restaurants in terms of food health and safety
Offers answers to frequently asked questions:
Where data comes from (local health inspections)
How frequently restaurants are inspected (2-3 times per year on average)
How health inspectors calculate scores. Inspectors from local health departments randomly inspect each restaurant several times per year. At the end of each inspection, the restaurant receives a hygiene score based on the inspector's findings. If a serious health issue is detected, the restaurant is immediately closed.The most severe food violations (handling of raw meat)

"This system, which is totally voluntary, gets better and better through communication,” said Michlin. “If we can't find a particular restaurant, we welcome your suggestions. We'll look into your request and get back to you."

Contact:

For more information about CleanScores, visit www.CleanScores.com. To reach the Zazie Cafe, call 415-564-5332.