The 10 Best Restaurant Health Inspections Apps In 2024

The CDC estimates that 3,000 people die from food-borne illnesses each year in the United States. 128,000 are hospitalized due to food poisoning, and about 48 million get sick. In New York City alone, nearly 400 restaurants were ordered closed by city Department of Health inspectors in 2023. Needless to say, safe food handling is crucial.

Your restaurant’s food safety and cleanliness can help keep down foodborne illness outbreaks and keep your food service establishment in business. However, you’re busy running a restaurant business. This is where health inspection apps come into play.

In this article, we’ll break down inspection apps’ purpose & features, then outline the top 10 options on the market now.

Ready? A cleaner restaurant starts here.

Why use Restaurant health inspection apps

Your restaurant should always be prepared for unannounced inspections. Furthermore, your food establishment should never be putting its guests at risk. Restaurant health inspection apps can increase your preparedness while letting the public know about your outstanding inspection records. These apps provide many different features from food safety line checklists to other inspection scores in your area.

Features to look for in a restaurant inspection app

Although these apps offer many different features, consider which ones your restaurant demands the most. Some offerings that can best help you simplify your operations may include:

• Training templates/ideas: Proper food safety begins when you train your staff on how to do it right. These training tips should include everything from salmonella prevention to handwashing.

• Checklists: Checklists help keep your team organized and accountable, cleaning checklists are essential.

• Inspection report integrations: Some software allow you to review your personal inspection records, this can be useful when trying to improve before a re-inspection.

When reviewing these different applications, also keep these common health code violations in mind:

• Time and Temperature

• Food Storage

• Cross-Contamination

• Personal Hygiene

• Chemical Usage and Storage

For more information check out this article on health code violations.

The top 10 restaurant health inspection apps in 2024

Keeping the above information in mind, check out these top apps that can help you prepare for your next restaurant health inspection.

1. SafetyCulture

SafetyCulture is a digitalized operations platform that gives your team the tools to improve every day. 49% of users reported improvements in safety and compliance. With SafetyCulture, you can gain visibility across your operations to maintain the highest standard of cleanliness and safety. You can even enable notifications to address issues immediately and prioritize the safety and health of your guests.

SafetyCulture can help you simplify food handling training and reduce food waste. This can be accomplished through the implementation of their sensors that ensure food is kept at the proper temperatures and meets strict quality standards every time. Some top features listed across their website include:

• Housekeeping checks

• Bathroom cleaning checks

• Inspections and audits

• Risk assessments

• Temperature sensor monitoring

• Safety audits and briefings

This app is available on both the App Store and Google Play. Pricing for SafetyCulture starts for free, or you can check out their premium option for deeper insights for $24/seat/month.

2. Connecteam

Connecteam is a team-focused app that can simplify your workflow. Connecteam offers many solutions for businesses in the food and beverage industry. Beyond training, communication, and business operations assistance this app also offers safety-specific checklists. In fact, 48% of users saw fewer safety incidents. Some interesting features include:

• Surveys for real-time feedback

• Emergency procedures

• Safety guidelines

• Instant notifications

• Food safety training help

You can start a 14-day free trial of Connecteam through the App Store or Google Play. This app offers pricing ranging from $0 - $99/month. For more details, visit Connecteam’s pricing page and start preparing your business today.

3. GoSpotCheck

Looking for the world’s top task management app? Look no further than GoSpotCheck, an app that enables your restaurant staff to move faster, work smarter, and accomplish more. GoSpotCheck can help you track and improve food safety in real-time. You can create mobile temperature tasks and send them to your staff, ensuring accurate temperatures using the Bluetooth thermometer IoT integration.

Aside from food and safety, this app can help streamline your operations in many ways. In fact, some of the world's top teams from PepsiCo to Anheuser-Busch have cut audit times in half and boosted sales by up to 9% with GoSpotCheck. Check out their top features for restaurants:

• Mobile task management

• Shareable data dashboards

• Live support

• Advanced reporting and insights

This app is available for both iPhones and Androids and offers different pricing packages tailored to your specific restaurant.

4. FoodCode-Pro

Although not an app, FoodCode-Pro is trusted by public and environmental health departments throughout the country. This software was founded with the specific mission to prevent foodborne illnesses. FoodCode-Pro is a cloud-based platform that streamlines retail food safety inspections. It’s a fully digital, mobile platform developed by a national food safety consulting firm over the last 20+ years. This software is based on the FDA Food Code and generates a fully compliant FDA inspection checklist and report with supporting details.

Here’s how FoodCode-Pro can help your restaurant business:

• OCD inspection methodology

• Always compliant with FDA food code

• Easy to use and cloud-based

• Enabled you to search FDA code effortlessly

It is the only inspection platform built by inspectors, for inspectors. You can contact them to start your demo.

5. Leafe

Leafe is an app that enables you to maintain the highest safety standards and reduce food waste. It also helps you eliminate paperwork, making your restaurant a bit greener. In fact, it’s 70% faster than using standard pen & paper, saving your team up to 40 hours per week. You can start and end your day with Leafe’s unique routines system. This app enables you to take your fridge and freezer temperatures with an easy-to-use slider tool. Your team members can know exactly what needs to get done when they arrive, and before they leave with Leafe. Some features to consider include:

• Opening and Closing Routines system

• Easy temperature tool

• Easy-to-follow checklists

• Kitchen Intelligence feature to prevent food waste

And more! Leafe is available for all smartphone users and has different pricing options depending on your needs.

6. HDScores

HDScores enables you to search for any restaurant or food-serving establishment to see its health department ratings. These scores are historical-based values from 0-100%. The closer to 100% the cleaner the business is. Clicking on a business will create a drop-down list of all previous health inspection scores and detailed notes by the inspectors themselves. HDScores has built a database that covers 73% of the entire United States. HDInsight is: 

• Fast - Reports are shared monthly

• Simple - Reports crawl through all your locations’ health inspection reports and condense them into a single form.

• Actionable - Reports highlight critical violations and trends, helping you identify location-specific or company-wide areas of need.

• Archived - Every new report is archived with HDInsight, offering your brand visibility into how locations improve over time and measure up against each other.

Ready to see all your public restaurant inspection results? You can find more information by visiting the HDScores website.

7. GoAudits

You can ensure the highest food safety, hygiene, and quality standards by streamlining your audits with GoAudits food safety software. GoAudits is an all-in-one inspection software for your food audits. This software offers standardized food safety checklists, up to 5x faster and more frequent self-audits, ensuring you consistently meet food safety certification standards. Check out their features:

• Advanced analytics

• Unlimited action assignees

• Efficient mobile inspections

• Issue & task tracking

Start with a 14-day free trial and then consider either of their pricing packages from $10/month to $30. GoAudits is available on: Web, iOS, and Android.

8. Xenia

Xenia's dynamic inspection and audit software empowers your restaurant to maximize safety. Xenia provides tools such as ready-to-use templates to help your restaurant organize and delegate responsibilities. For example, they offer a food safety compliance checklist that can help maintain the freshness of food products by ensuring proper handling, storage, and preparation techniques. Some of Xenia’s helpful features include:

• Bluetooth sensors for freezers and refrigerators

• Automated workflows for out-of-range temperatures

• Incident reporting

• Progress reports

• HACCP plan execution

If you own multi-location restaurants, Xenia can help you manage them all in one place. For more information, check out their pricing page with several options for every type of restaurant.

9. CoInspect

CoInspect, in short, makes food safe. This easy-to-use app makes it easy to manage food establishment inspections, compliance, and brand standards. Digitizing your inspection preparations can avoid human error and make for a more organized experience. CoInspect is designed for all different restaurant employees, as everyone plays a part in proper food safety and public health. This app offers:

• Checklists

• A convenient task performance review

• Offline inspections, no Wi-Fi needed

• Food safety compliance workflows

Choose a plan that’s best for your restaurant, with pricing plans ranging from $25-$50/month per location.

10. FoodDocs Food Safety App

FoodDocs offers a food safety app for production, food service, and retail. Available on both the App Store and Google Play, the FoodDocs App automates food safety protocols, making it easier to address food safety concerns. With this app, you can also create your HACCP Plan in about 1 hour. Discover FoodDocs Food Safety App top features here:

• Easy monitoring to save time

• Cloud-based storage

• Team management to help maintain compliance with food regulations

• Intuitive design to help employees use the app with ease

• Temperature monitoring log

FoodDocs is a great resource for restaurants and specializes in many offerings, check out their pricing packages ranging from $84/-$250/month.

Keep it clean

Now that you’ve reviewed these amazing restaurant inspection software, it’s time to start your journey towards a cleaner restaurant with more consistent food safety. If every food establishment does their part we can lower the foodborne illness death rate in this country. Keep your raw meat separate from your other ingredients and organize your inspection workflow today.

Next up? Check out our most recent inspection-related articles:

• Get Your Restaurant Ready for an Inspection

• How to Make the Health Inspector Happy

• 15 Licenses and Permits Needed to Open a Restaurant

• Restaurant Cleaning Checklist: The Ultimate Guide