Users of the Just Eat delivery service in Scotland will now be able to check the hygiene rating of any restaurant they order from in a move that has been welcomed by food safety chiefs.
Customers will this week be able to see at a glance the latest Food Standards Scotland (FSS) Food Hygiene Information for thousands of Scottish restaurants and takeaways.
Food safety chiefs are delighted by the move and called for other food delivery businesses to follow the example.
FSS Chief Executive Geoff Ogle said: “We welcome this move from Just Eat to increase the transparency of Food Hygiene Information, helping customers make informed choices when eating outside of the home, including ordering food online .
“We suggest that people in Scotland use the Food Hygiene Information Scheme search tool on our website to check how a food business has fared in their last food hygiene inspection.”
A spokeswoman for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, said: “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 their food.
“We would like to see others follow Just Eat’s example.”
The move follows a trial in Northern Ireland where the ratings for over 600 restaurants were displayed on the Just Eat app and website.
While it is currently not compulsory for restaurants and takeaways to display their Food Hygiene Rating online, a Just Eat spokesman said the new initiative provided peace of mind for customers and incentivised restaurants to improve standards.
The company also commissioned research of 2,081 British adults which revealed that 93 per cent of people believe it should be mandatory for food businesses to provide online access to hygiene information.
Eight in ten respondents said they considered it important to know the Food Hygiene Rating of a food business before they purchased food from them.
Earlier this year the company launched a scheme to provide training programmes to improve standards in restaurants with ratings of three stars or fewer.
Just Eat’s UK Managing Director Graham Corfield said: “We spoke to customers about the information they want before choosing their takeaway, and their feedback was clear. 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 hygiene and safety and ultimately drive standards up across the whole industry – even when the food isn’t being ordered via us.
“Our customers ordered more than 120 million meals via Just Eat last year and they deserve to have as much information as possible before making their food decisions.”
