What is a good food hygiene rating?

The scheme runs 0 to 5, and it is tempting to read it like a school grade where anything above half is fine. It does not work that way. A 5 is "very good", a 4 is "good", and both describe a business the inspector was satisfied with. A 3 is "generally satisfactory": the business met the legal minimum, but something, food handling, the premises, or the confidence in its management, kept it off the top.

So the honest reading is that 5 and 4 are good, 3 is a pass with a caveat, and 0 to 2 all mean the inspector required improvement. Most people are surprised that 3 is not better news than it sounds.

A 5 means that at the last inspection the business met every standard checked, with nothing needing attention. It is also the norm, not the exception: in a typical UK council roughly three quarters of rated businesses hold a 5, and around 93% hold a 3, 4 or 5. That commonness is the point. Because a 5 is achievable by any well-run kitchen, a business that does not have one has usually had a reason.

A 3 is a legal pass, and plenty of good businesses hold one, often after a single off day or one area the inspector flagged. But it is worth reading alongside two things: the date, because a 3 from two years ago may since have become a 5 or slipped further, and which of the three areas scored low, which every venue page here breaks out. A 3 held down by paperwork is a different thing from a 3 held down by food handling.

The single most useful habit is to read the number with its date. A rating is a snapshot from one inspection, and how often a business is re-inspected depends on its risk, from about every six months to every two years or more. A good rating that is years old is a weaker signal than a good rating from last month. The number tells you what the inspector found; the date tells you how much that still describes today.