Common questions

Grade Pending means the NYC Department of Health just inspected the restaurant, found enough violations to drop the grade, and the restaurant is exercising its right to a re-inspection before the new grade gets publicly posted. The “A” you may see in the window is from the previous cycle — the current score is pending. About 60% of restaurants in Grade Pending pass the re-inspection back to an A; the rest end up with a B or C.

NYC restaurant inspection results land in our feed within 24 hours of the inspection. Chicago, SF, and Boston are on similar 24-hour cycles. FDA / FSIS / CDC recalls and outbreaks land within minutes of publication. The live map at /map refreshes every 60 seconds.

Free (no signup): every FDA / USDA / CPSC recall, CDC outbreak, NYC + Chicago + SF + Boston DOH inspection, NYC 311 restaurant complaint, the full live feed, and the recall lookup tool.
Signed up (free account): everything above PLUS the live inspection map for your city. National coverage is in the works.
Pro ($4.99/mo or $39.99/yr): everything in free PLUS Inspection Radar (push when DOH hits near your saved address), push notifications, city-specific Pro Tips, NLRB / OSHA / DOL / wage-hour / labor-law alerts, unlimited bookmarks. No ads on Pro.

Inspection Radar is a Pro feature. You save your restaurant addresses under Settings → Locations. Whenever the NYC / Chicago / SF / Boston DOH publishes an inspection result for a restaurant within a configurable radius of your saved address, we push you within minutes.

The signal isn't “an inspector is at your door right now” — it's “an inspector is in your zone today.” Use it as a heads-up to walk your line, check temps, and make sure the prep station is clean.

Sign in, open Settings, and click Manage billing which opens the Stripe customer portal. From there, click Cancel subscription. You keep Pro access through the end of your current billing period — no awkward emails required.

We index every restaurant that's been inspected by NYC DOH, Chicago CDPH, SF DPH, or Boston ISD within the time window of our database. If your spot hasn't been inspected recently it won't appear yet. The full NYC dataset goes back ~14 months as of May 2026 — search by name, neighborhood, or borough. If a restaurant is brand-new (opened in the last 30 days) the city may not have inspected it yet.

Public government sources only. NYC DOHMH restaurant inspection results, Chicago CDPH food inspections, SF DPH health scores, Boston ISD inspections, FDA recalls, USDA FSIS meat alerts, CDC outbreak investigations, EPA water alerts, DOL / NLRB / OSHA / EEOC / BLS for the operator-tier content. Every alert links back to the original government source. We don't run our own inspections, we don't editorialize, we don't rank restaurants.

Pro members can enable browser push notifications under Settings → Notifications. We send pushes for: (1) urgent FDA recalls relevant to your saved cities, (2) Inspection Radar pings when an inspector hits near your saved address, (3) outbreak investigations in your region.

No marketing pushes, no engagement bait — only operationally relevant alerts.

We never store credit card numbers. All payment data is held by Stripe (PCI-DSS Level 1 certified, used by Slack, Lyft, Amazon, etc.). When you check out, you give Stripe your card, Stripe gives us a token, and we never see the actual card number. Updating, changing, or canceling your card all happens through Stripe's customer portal — same security as buying anything else online.

Email hello@getpanko.app. It's a real inbox — I (Alex, the founder) read every email that lands there. Most replies happen the same day.