Chicago Food Inspections

Content

The below description of this dataset is directly from the Chicago Department of Public Health's Food Protection Program:

This information is derived from inspections of restaurants and other food
establishments in Chicago from January 1, 2010 to the present. Inspections are performed by
staff from the Chicago Department of Public Health’s Food Protection Program. Inspections are
done using a standardized procedure. The results of the inspection are inputted into a database,
then reviewed and approved by a State of Illinois Licensed Environmental Health Practitioner
(LEHP). A subset of data elements are extracted from this database and downloaded into this
data portal. These elements are:

• DBA: ‘Doing business as.’ This is legal name of the establishment.
• AKA: ‘Also known as.’ This is the name the public would know the establishment as.
• License number: This is a unique number assigned to the establishment for the
  purposes of licensing by the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.
• Type of facility: Each establishment is described by one of the following: bakery, banquet
  hall, candy store, caterer, coffee shop, day care center (for ages less than 2), day care
  center (for ages 2 – 6), day care center (combo, for ages less than 2 and 2 – 6
  combined), gas station, Golden Diner, grocery store, hospital, long term care
  center(nursing home), liquor store, mobile food dispenser, restaurant, paleteria, school,
  shelter, tavern, social club, wholesaler, or Wrigley Field Rooftop.
• Risk category of facility: Each establishment is categorized as to its risk of adversely
  affecting the public’s health, with 1 being the highest and 3 the lowest. The frequency of
  inspection is tied to this risk, with risk 1 establishments inspected most frequently and
  risk 3 least frequently.
• Street address, city, state and zip code of facility: This is the complete address where
  the facility is located.
• Inspection date: This is the date the inspection occurred. A particular establishment is
  likely to have multiple inspections which are denoted by different inspection dates.
• Inspection type: An inspection can be one of the following types: canvass, the most
  common type of inspection performed at a frequency relative to the risk of the
  establishment; consultation, when the inspection is done at the request of the owner
  prior to the opening of the establishment; complaint, when the inspection is done in
  response to a complaint against the establishment; license, when the inspection is done
  as a requirement for the establishment to receive its license to operate; suspect food
  poisoning, when the inspection is done in response to one or more persons claiming to
  have gotten ill as a result of eating at the establishment (a specific type of complaint-
  based inspection); task-force inspection, when an inspection of a bar or tavern is done.
  Re-inspections can occur for most types of these inspections and are indicated as such.
• Results: An inspection can pass, pass with conditions or fail. Establishments receiving a
  ‘pass’ were found to have no critical or serious violations (violation number 1-14 and 15-
  29, respectively). Establishments receiving a ‘pass with conditions’ were found to have
  critical or serious violations, but these were corrected during the inspection.
  Establishments receiving a ‘fail’ were found to have critical or serious violations that
  were not correctable during the inspection. An establishment receiving a ‘fail’ does not
  necessarily mean the establishment’s licensed is suspended. Establishments found to
  be out of business or not located are indicated as such.
• Violations: An establishment can receive one or more of 45 distinct violations (violation
  numbers 1-44 and 70). For each violation number listed for a given establishment, the
  requirement the establishment must meet in order for it to NOT receive a violation is
  noted, followed by a specific description of the findings that caused the violation to be
  issued.

Acknowledgements

Data source: City of Chicago Data Portal
Image source: Dan Gold on Unsplash

Inspiration

Some ideas to investigate to help get you started:

• Map the locations of pass/fail results using a package like folium or plotly
• How have pass/fail rates changed over time?
• Do different inspection types have an impact on pass/fail rates?
• Can you create a model to predict the results based on the available information?