BALTIMORE — Soon, Baltimore area consumers can expect a new experience on Yelp.
The online review company will start providing customers with health inspection data for nearly 700,000 of their favorite businesses.
Hazel Analytics will provide the health scores, not only in Maryland but the rest of the country and Canada.
Yelp hopes the move makes it easier for diners to determine whether a restaurant is in compliance with their local health department.
In Baltimore, Yelp business pages will display an estimated health score from 1-100. Only those businesses who've had inspections with no violations receive a perfect score of 100.
Yelp says inspections at Baltimore businesses were down three percent during the pandemic.
During that period, the Baltimore Health Department reported violations at a 41 percent lower rate.
The average number of critical violations were down 48 percent from pre-pandemic levels.
Some of the falloff may be attributed to inspections being conducted virtually rather than in-person during the pandemic.
A good portion of those inspections consisted of compliance checks to local mask mandates and other restrictions that were put in place during that time.
