The Health Department will inspect you without grading you. It costs $100

You can ask the Health Department to send an inspector who will not grade you and cannot fine you.

They walk the restaurant during your normal business hours, at a time you agreed, and tell you what a real inspector would write up and how to fix it. It is called a consultative or educational inspection, and it has existed for years.

What it costs

$100 before your first inspection and letter grade. You have to be open for business to use it.

$400 afterwards. The more expensive version also reviews your earlier inspection results with you and includes a session with your kitchen staff to go through the recommendations.

Neither one is graded. Neither one is scored. No summons comes out of it.

Why so few restaurants do this

Two reasons, and neither survives much thought.

The first is a suspicion that inviting an inspector in is asking for trouble. It is not. The visit is educational by design — they cannot issue you a violation on it.

The second is that $400 feels like a lot when you are watching every dollar. Set it against one re-inspection. A B grade costs you a return visit, the violations cited on that visit, and a card in the window that changes what people do when they walk past. Four hundred dollars is cheap for finding out in advance.

When it is genuinely worth it

Before you open. The $100 version exists for exactly this, and it is the best money a new operator can spend. You get told what is wrong while there is still time and no grade attached.

When you are carrying a B or a C. You already know something is being cited repeatedly. An outside pair of trained eyes on your own floor beats another cycle of guessing.

When you take over a space. Kitchens carry their previous operator's habits in the building itself. Drainage, gaps, ventilation, layout — you inherit all of it.

Before a second location opens. Whatever you got wrong the first time is about to be duplicated.

What to do with the visit

Have your manager walk with them, not just the owner. The person who will actually maintain the conditions should hear it directly, in the room, from the person who assesses them.

Write down every item. The list they give you is a to-do list with the scoring logic behind it, which is more than you get from any consultant.

Then fix the conditions rather than the instances. If they point at standing water under the three-compartment sink, the fix is the drip, not the mop.

Booking it

Contact the Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation. They schedule it with you — this is not an unannounced visit, and that is the whole point.

Language assistance is provided at no cost if you want the walkthrough in something other than English.