Texas town to make QR codes a new part of their restaurant inspection certificates

The residents and visitors of the town of Plano, Texas, will soon be able to use their smartphones to help to find out more information about the details of the inspection certificate that has been assigned to that restaurant.

This makes Plano the first city to provide consumers with instant access to the health inspection information. It has accomplished this goal by adding a QR code on the publicly-displayed permit at the restaurant, so that smartphone device users can view the data from the health inspections of the approximately 1,400 different restaurant establishments throughout the town.

The purpose is to make it easier for consumers to obtain a better understanding of the health and cleanliness aspects of the restaurants where they would like to eat. For example, a steakhouse patron may not have any idea that the ice cream machine was found to be unclean during the last inspection and that there were several specific violations that were present, but not enough to stop the location from obtaining a permit.

Equally, a fast food restaurant’s patrons might want to know that its inspections found that a certain type of burger was not being cooked to the correct temperature.

This new and innovative mobile program was created by the Environmental Health Department of the City of Plano. According to a statement made by Geoffrey Hienicke, the Environmental Health Manager, “The code links into our web site with hits to our site increasing 61 percent since the program’s implementation in September 2011.”