Just Eat has announced plans to publish the official Food Hygiene Rating of every restaurant it offers on its platform.
It becomes the first online food delivery company to allow customers to view the hygiene scores for over 30,000 outlets.
“We spoke to customers about the information they want before choosing their takeaway and their feedback was clear,” said Graham Corfield, UK managing director at Just Eat.
“They want easy access to independent information about the hygiene standards of their local restaurants and we’ve worked hard to make that a reality. This will have the dual benefit of giving customers all the information they want, while also incentivising restaurants to invest in food safety and ultimately drive standards up across the whole industry, even when food isn’t being ordered via us.”
The move follows a trial of the initiative in Northern Ireland earlier this year. Just Eat said it consulted “extensively” with the Food Standards Agency and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) ahead of the new feature going live.
Heather Hancock, FSA chairman said: “I am pleased to see Just Eat taking the lead by making this positive step to publish the food hygiene ratings for businesses on their website. Having this transparency allows consumers to consider food safety when choosing to order food online and will help drive up standards across the sector. I encourage others in this sector to follow suit.”
Meanwhile Kate Thompson, CIEH Wales Director, said: “This latest announcement by Just Eat is excellent news. More and more consumers are choosing to use online food delivery platforms. The availability of food hygiene ratings at the point of ordering will enable them to make informed decisions about where they purchase food. We would like to see others follow Just Eat’s example.”
Earlier this year Just Eat announced a £1 million investment to provide bespoke training programmes to improve standards among restaurants with ratings lower than three in partnership with NSF, the leading global food safety consultants.
It also removed all zero-rated restaurants from the platform and introduced a new policy whereby all new restaurant sign ups require a minimum Food Hygiene Rating of three stars. Just Eat has also offered access to Level 2 food hygiene training and certification to every business on the platform since 2016.
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