dataset · Chicago Department of Public Health via Chicago Data Portal

Chicago food inspections

Every routine canvass, license, and complaint-driven food-establishment inspection by the Chicago Department of Public Health since 2010. One row per inspection; outcome is the results field (Pass / Pass w/ Conditions / Fail). The dataset is anonymized at the inspector level — no per-sanitarian variance is recoverable from the public release.

data through 2026-10-30 · 317,892 inspection rows

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Stories using this data

article

Three buckets, one verdict

Chicago classifies every food establishment into one of three risk tiers — High, Medium, Low — that govern how often the city inspects them. Across more than 100,000 inspections since 2020, those three buckets fail at indistinguishable rates. The tier predicts cadence; not outcome. Where the real variation lives: facility type and the trigger that brought the inspector through the door.