US Restaurant Inspections Scraper 🍽️

Restaurant & food health-inspection results from major US cities — NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle (King County) and Austin — straight from official city open-data portals. No API key, no proxy.

Pull structured health-inspection records across the biggest US markets in one run: business name, address, inspection date, score/grade, result, violations, and geo-coordinates. Filter by name, date, ZIP, result, score, or a full-text keyword like roach, rodent, mice or vermin.

Perfect for consumer food-safety apps, restaurant-discovery products, journalism/data reporting, and B2B lead generation (failed inspections → leads for pest control, cleaning, and compliance consultants).

Data comes from each city's official open-data portal (Socrata). Public, non-personal inspection records. No key required (an optional free Socrata app token raises rate limits).

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Supported cities

City	State	Highlights
New York City	NY	Letter grade, score, critical flag, cuisine, per-violation detail
Chicago	IL	Pass/Fail result, risk level, full violation text
San Francisco	CA	Numeric score (100 = perfect)
King County (Seattle)	WA	Grade, score, result, violation points
Austin	TX	Numeric score (100 = perfect)

One normalized schema across all of them — mix and match cities in a single run.

Features

• ✅ No API key, no proxy — official open-data APIs, very low maintenance.
• ✅ Full-text search — keyword finds violations by word (roach, rodent…) on every city.
• ✅ Newest first — ordered by most recent inspection date.
• ✅ Filter that matters — by name, ZIP, borough, result (fail/closed), score range, date.
• ✅ Normalized output — same fields for every city; optional raw record included.

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Input

Field	Description
Cities	Which cities to pull (default: all five).
Business name contains	Filter by restaurant name.
Keyword	Full-text search across all columns (roach, rodent, mice…).
Result contains	Filter by result/action (fail, closed…).
Borough / city	Filter by locality (where the city exposes it).
ZIP codes	Restrict to specific ZIPs.
Min / Max score	Score range (see the score-meaning note below).
Inspected after / before	Date range (YYYY-MM-DD).
Max results per city	How many inspections per selected city.

Score meaning differs by city. NYC & Seattle: higher = worse (violation points). SF & Austin: higher = better (100 = perfect). Chicago has no numeric score (uses Pass/Fail). Each output row carries a score_meaning field so you always know which way it runs.

Example — find rodent violations this year

{
  "cities": ["nyc", "chicago"],
  "keyword": "rodent",
  "inspectedAfter": "2025-01-01",
  "maxResultsPerCity": 500
}

Example — failed Chicago inspections

{
  "cities": ["chicago"],
  "resultContains": "fail",
  "maxResultsPerCity": 1000
}

Output

{
  "city": "New York City",
  "state": "NY",
  "business_name": "BAGEL EXPRESS III",
  "address": "340 3RD AVE",
  "locality": "Manhattan",
  "zip": "10010",
  "phone": "2125551234",
  "cuisine": "Bagels/Pretzels",
  "inspection_date": "2026-07-16",
  "inspection_type": "Cycle Inspection / Re-inspection",
  "score": 41,
  "grade": "N",
  "result": "Establishment Closed by DOHMH.",
  "critical_flag": "Critical",
  "violation_code": "04L",
  "violation_description": "Establishment is not free of harborage or conditions conducive to rodents...",
  "latitude": 40.74,
  "longitude": -73.98,
  "inspection_id": "50012345_2026-07-16",
  "score_meaning": "higher = worse (violation points)",
  "source_domain": "data.cityofnewyork.us",
  "dataset_id": "43nn-pn8j"
}

Field availability varies by city (e.g. Chicago has no score but rich violation text; SF/Austin are score-only).

Run it on a schedule

Set inspectedAfter to yesterday and run daily to get a steady feed of new inspections — pipe them to Slack, Google Sheets, a CRM or a webhook.

Notes & limitations

• Official city Socrata open-data APIs — public, non-personal inspection records.
• Coverage = the cities listed above; more can be added.
• Score semantics differ by city (documented above; also in each row's score_meaning).
• Data freshness depends on each city's own publishing cadence.

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Keywords

restaurant inspections, food inspections, health inspections, restaurant grades, food safety, restaurant scraper, NYC restaurant inspections, Chicago food inspections, San Francisco restaurant scores, Seattle food establishment, Austin food inspection, restaurant violations, health code, restaurant data, food safety data, open data, Socrata, pest control leads, restaurant lead generation, DOHMH, restaurant hygiene.