Analyze This

For the past few months I’ve been teaching myself to write spiders - little Perl programs that crunch through URLs and download data. In the spirit of learning by doing, my first project was to grab 5,000 health inspection reports for Manhattan restaurants from the NYC Department of Health website.

The reports list a lot of yucky things, from spoiled food to rat droppings, that you’d rather not know. I’ll tell you one thing, though - after going through this exercise, I’ll never buy the cheap sushi at Daikichi again.

Here’s a narrow slice of what I found: the average number of violations per restaurant for Manhattan chains with five or more locations. Most of the violations aren’t too bad. But unless you like raw sewage, stay away from the Popeyes on Fulton Street.

Over 2 Violations per Location
Café Metro
Ray’s Pizza
Sbarro’s

1.5 to 2 Violations per Location
Andrews Coffee Shop
Blimpie
Burger Heaven
City Market Café
Cosi
Daikichi Sushi
Europa Cafe
Kennedy Fried Chicken
Le Pain Quotidien
Pronto Pizza
Ranch 1
Teriyaki Boy
TGI Friday’s
Zaro’s Bread Basket

1 to 1.5 Violations per Location
Au Bon Pain
Baluchi’s
Barnes & Noble Cafe
Burritoville
Chipotle Mexican Grill
City Perk
Cremalita
Crown Fried Chicken
Domino’s Pizza
Jackson Hole
Popeye’s
Subway
Tasti D-Lite
Zaro’s Bread Basket

0.5 to 1 Violations per Location
Burger King
Dean & Deluca
Dunkin Donuts
Haagen Dazs
Hale & Hearty Soups
KFC
Krispy Kreme
McDonald’s
Pret a Manger
Starbucks
Wendy’s

Less Than 0.5 Violations per Location
Ben & Jerry’s

A few observations:

It’s easy to despise the big fast food chains, but when it comes to cleanliness, they seem to have their act together. Just compare Burger King to Burger Heaven or KFC to Kennedy Fried Chicken. (Subway doesn’t count - it’s a network of franchisees rather than a centrally managed operation like McDonalds.)

Pizza - or any restaurant where food is left out for long periods - is a bad bet.

Violations aren’t likely at chains where the food arrives in sealed containers and doesn’t need to be prepared before serving. The prime examples are ice cream shops like Haagen Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s. Coffee and baked goods (Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Dean & Deluca’s) seem to be relatively safe as well.