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What happened to San Francisco's restaurant scores
San Francisco co-wrote the LIVES standard and scored restaurants out of 100. In 2021 it stopped. Here is what replaced the score, from the city's own pages.
For years San Francisco restaurants had a number: an inspection score out of 100. San Francisco co-developed the LIVES data standard with Yelp and New York City, and it was one of the two launch cities when Yelp announced the standard in January 2013. That score is gone. Here is what the city's own pages say changed and where each era's data lives.
The short answer
The city's open-data entry for Health Inspection Scores (2016-2019) says: "As of 2021, the LIVES standard is no longer being used to evaluate restaurants. For that reason, this dataset is no longer being updated but will remain on the open data portal." Inspections now end in a status, not a score: the current dataset records "the facility status (Pass, Conditional Pass, or Closure) after the inspection."
How the old score worked
According to the 2016-2019 dataset's description, "After inspecting a facility, a Health Inspector assigns a score based on observed violations." Violations fell into three risk categories: high risk (violations that "directly relate to the transmission of food borne illnesses, the adulteration of food products and the contamination of food-contact surfaces"), moderate risk, and low risk. The inspector's score card was kept at the establishment and published in the dataset.
What replaced it: placards
The city's page on restaurant health inspection posters explains the three placards:
| Placard | Status | What it means (city's wording) |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Pass | "The facility had zero to 1 major violations observed at time of inspection." A major violation, if any, was corrected during the inspection. |
| Yellow | Conditional pass | "The facility had 2 or more major violations observed at the time of the routine inspection." They were corrected during the inspection; the city re-inspects and issues a new placard. |
| Red | Closed | Closed for health hazards or major violations that cannot be fixed right away; they must be corrected before reopening. |
The city says it checks "More than 7,000 locations that serve food to the public," including restaurants, bars, markets, bakeries and stadium food facilities, on a routine basis, at other unscheduled times, and after complaints. Restaurants must post their placard where it can be clearly seen.
The sources we checked do not give a reason for the change. We have not found a San Francisco Department of Public Health statement explaining it, so this page does not guess.
Where each era's data lives
| Dataset | Covers | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Health Inspection Scores (2016-2019) | Numeric scores and violations | Frozen last updated 2021-09-24; "no longer being updated" |
| Health Inspections (2020-2023) | Inspections from 2020 to 2023 | Frozen "historical data only and will not be updated" |
| Health Inspection Scores (2024-Present) | Facility status (Pass, Conditional Pass, Closure) and violations | Current "will be updated monthly"; last updated 2026-09-17 |
For looking up a single restaurant, the city's inspection results page says "We update this database every week." It also notes: "We are using a new database. To view details from inspections between March 2020 to August 2023, you can still browse older results."
Note that the newest dataset keeps "Scores" in its title but records a status. If you are joining the eras together, the 2016-2019 file has a number and the current file does not; there is no conversion between them.
Why you still see San Francisco scores online
The 2016-2019 scores remain downloadable, and copies of them have spread through apps, tutorials and dataset mirrors. A score out of 100 shown for a San Francisco restaurant is either from that historical file or produced by someone other than the city. For the city's current view of a restaurant, use the placard or the status in the current dataset.
San Francisco also no longer publishes its own feed to Yelp. On Yelp's public feed list, San Francisco appears only as a row sourced from Hazel Analytics, the aggregator Yelp began using in 2022 (see our LIVES page).