Popular food safety rating system expanding to additional food businesses, including mobile food vendors

Public Health – Seattle & King County's popular food safety rating system will expand to additional permitted food businesses in King County after a vote today by the King County Board of Health.

Starting in 2025, bakeries, mobile food vendors (such as food trucks and stands), meat and fish vendors, and catering operations will be publicly rated using the familiar green "smiley face" rating system currently applied to King County restaurants, ice cream and coffee shops. These additional vendors will receive their new rating window sign on a rolling basis in the first quarter of 2025.

Public Health's Food Safety Program proposed this expansion to the Board of Health, which has responsibility over local food service regulations. The goal of the expansion is to make food safety inspection data more available to consumers and to create a more equitable food safety disclosure practice across all food service establishments. The expansion will also incentivize business operators to improve food handling practices and enhance the reputation of businesses that are successfully meeting food safety standards, helping them attract customers.

Another benefit of the expansion is that it will allow consumers to easily differentiate permitted mobile food vendors from those that aren't permitted. This improvement comes at a time when King County – along with cities across the country – are seeing an increase in unpermitted mobile food vendors. Once all permitted vendors are displaying the familiar green safety signs, customers can more easily know when food from mobile vendors has been permitted by Public Health.

The rating system and its expansion is widely supported within the food service industry, including by the Washington Food Truck Association and the Washington Hospitality Association. In a recent Public Health survey of all permitted King County food establishments, 76% of all permitted establishments, and 70% of all permitted bakeries, mobile food vendors, meat/fish establishments and catering operations, said they were in favor of expanding the food safety rating system, of the 729 respondents.

"The food rating system gives community members peace of mind when eating at one of the many amazing food establishments across our county," said Board of Health Chair, King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda. "Expanding this system to mobile vendors helps protect our community's health while also giving folks the confidence they need to patronize these small businesses helping to support our local economy. This is a win-win and we know more needs to be done and will be done to set up entrepreneurs getting started on their mobile food vendor journeys for success. We look forward to continuing to get feedback from stakeholders to ensure food sellers are in compliance and permitting isn't a barrier to entering the marketplace."

"Our food inspectors work closely with permitted food vendors to make sure they're following safe food handling practices to help prevent the spread of foodborne illness, like salmonella and E. coli," said Dr. Faisal Khan, Director of Public Health – Seattle & King County. "The expansion of the food safety rating system will allow consumers to make more informed safety decisions when dining out at food trucks and stands and help to support food businesses that are working hard to serve safely."

Public Health launched its existing food safety rating system in 2017, following extensive stakeholder engagement, research into other cities' food rating systems, and hundreds of requests from consumers to make food safety inspection data for King County food businesses readily available to the public. The system features the use of window signs readily visible to the public, displaying safety ratings on a four-tiered scale – Needs to Improve, Okay, Good, and Excellent – based on Public Health food safety inspectors' findings regarding the conditions of the physical facilities, equipment, and safe food handling practices at the establishment.