FSA data and sources, what RatingCafe republishes
Primary FSA open data feed, refresh cadence, normalisation rules, and how to verify any rating directly with the Food Standards Agency.
Last fact-checked: · Reviewed by James Thornton
Primary source
All hygiene ratings come from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) open data feed:
- Endpoint: https://api.ratings.food.gov.uk/
- Format: JSON, public, no API key required
- Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0
- Update frequency: FSA refreshes the feed every working day
Our pipeline
RatingCafe’s data pipeline runs automatically every 24 hours:
- Fetch, full UK dataset pulled from the FSA endpoint
- Normalise, venue names, postcodes, business types standardised
- Compare, diff against yesterday’s snapshot to detect rating changes
- Publish, updated pages regenerated via static build
Every venue page displays its last FSA inspection date, pulled directly from the feed. If a rating is more than 18 months old, we flag it.
Verifying a rating
If you want to confirm any rating on this site, you can cross-check on the official FSA website:
- Direct search: https://ratings.food.gov.uk/
- Your local authority’s food hygiene page
If you spot a discrepancy, please email hello@ratingcafe.cafe with the venue name and postcode, we’ll investigate within 24 hours.
What’s not in the data
- Ratings for venues that haven’t been inspected yet (newly opened)
- Hygiene scores for non-UK establishments (currently UK-only)
- Any subjective quality measure, taste, service, price. This is a hygiene-only directory.