“My husband ate at this restaurant on Friday 10/16/2015 and was admitted to the ICU with a bacterial infection from food poisioning [sic],” Kari F. wrote on the Mariscos San Juan Yelp page on Oct. 19. “It was a very scary experience for all. I hope that others affected are
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Data Software Company Aims to Revolutionize Access to Restaurant Inspection Scores
Imagine being able to travel to any city in the country — or even the world — and pull up Yelp, Urbanspoon, or a similar smartphone app and instantly access a universal health inspection scoring system for the restaurants you might want to patronize. 
You could immediately see which restaurants
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Seattle’s King County Venturing into Uncharted Territory with New Restaurant Grading System
When Sarah Schacht walked through the doors of an Ethiopian restaurant in Seattle in February 2013 to grab a meal with a friend, the only accessible information she had about the place was its Yelp score: It had the highest-rated Ethiopian cuisine in the city. What Schacht didn’t know was
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Food Safety in Numbers
(This article by Advik Shreekumar was published Jan. 6, 2015, by the Harvard Political Review and is reposted here with permission.) On March 23, 2013, the civic organization Smart Chicago launched an ambitious program to enhance the city’s food-safety efforts. Using a mix of statistical techniques and computer science, Foodborne
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Could Yelp and Twitter Become Tools to Detect Foodborne Outbreaks?
Social media platforms such as Yelp and Twitter have significantly altered the online landscape for restaurants. Now anyone with an Internet connection and an opinion can broadcast their thoughts to others interested in visiting. But what if public health officials could use Yelp and Twitter to track people mentioning foodborne
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NYC Uses Yelp Reviews to Track Foodborne Illnesses
Last September, Food Safety News reported on Yelp’s efforts to start posting health grades on its restaurant pages. Now health officials are experimenting with using Yelp reviews to track down foodborne illness outbreaks. While investigating a recent outbreak, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) noticed
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Yelp Starting to Post Restaurant Health-Inspection Scores
Yelp.com is starting to make it easier for diners to find a place to eat without getting sick.In August, Louisville became the second city to incorporate health-inspection information into its restaurant pages on the user-review site. San Francisco — Yelp’s home turf — was the first to do so back
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