Know What You're Eating.

Ratings run from 0 to 5. A 5 (Very Good) means excellent hygiene standards. A 3 or 4 is satisfactory. A 1 or 2 means the business needs to make improvements. A 0 (Urgent Improvement Required) is the worst possible result. In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland this is called the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS). In Scotland, the Food Hygiene Information Scheme (FHIS) uses a simpler Pass or Improvement Required result instead of a number.

An Environmental Health Officer from the local council visits unannounced and checks three things: how food is handled and stored, the condition and cleanliness of the premises, and how well the business manages food safety. Each area gets a score and they combine into the final rating. The same process applies to all food businesses: restaurants, takeaways, cafés, pubs, hotels, and supermarkets.

Environmental Health Officers employed by local councils carry out food hygiene inspections. They are independent of the businesses they inspect and always visit unannounced. Results are published publicly by the Food Standards Agency. FoodCheck reads directly from that official data source, so nothing is filtered or editorialised.

Yes. FoodCheck covers food businesses across England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Scottish businesses are rated under the Food Hygiene Information Scheme (FHIS) run by Food Standards Scotland, so you will see a Pass or Improvement Required result rather than a 0 to 5 score. Everything else works the same.

FoodCheck is completely free to download and use. No ads, no required account. An optional one-time supporter purchase or annual subscription unlocks extras: saving favourite venues, viewing a business's full inspection history, push notifications when a saved place gets re-inspected, offline caching, and pre-downloading ratings for an entire city.

FoodCheck fetches ratings live from the official Food Standards Agency API every time you search, so what you see always reflects the most recently published inspection. Each business listing shows the exact date of the last inspection, so you can judge for yourself how recent it is. If a business has been re-inspected and the FSA has published the new result, it will appear in FoodCheck immediately.