Chicago inspection radar — real-time alerts for operators

How Chicago inspections work

Chicago's food protection inspectors are dispatched out of the Department of Public Health's central office and work assigned routes covering different community areas. The city's inspection schedule is driven by establishment risk category, complaint volume, and follow-up requirements. Like most major U.S. cities, Chicago publishes inspection results in a public Open Data portal — which Panko Alerts ingests in near-real time. When an inspection appears in the feed within your radius, you get a push within minutes.

Where Chicago restaurants cluster

The highest inspection-density areas in Chicago are the Loop, West Loop, Wicker Park / Bucktown, Lincoln Park, Logan Square, Pilsen, and Hyde Park. River North and the South Loop see consistent traffic. Suburban-edge community areas (Beverly, Mount Greenwood, Edison Park) see less frequent but more cluster-style inspector visits. The radar matches against any CDPH inspection regardless of community area, so a Lincoln Park operator with a 500m radius will get pulled in to alerts from any adjacent block.

Chicago block math

Chicago blocks are extremely uniform — a standard city block is 1/8 of a mile, or roughly 200 meters. That means the inspection radar's slider mapping is cleaner in Chicago than in NYC. 200m ≈ 1 Chicago block. 800m ≈ 4 Chicago blocks. 1,200m (the radar max) ≈ 6 Chicago blocks. Most Chicago operators we'd recommend start at 400-600m, which captures the immediate restaurant cluster on a typical commercial street.

Set up Chicago radar

Real-time food safety alerts from 25+ government sources. AI-scored by urgency. Less than one bad meal a month — $4.99/mo.