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Call Kurtis: Restaurant Health? Now There's An App For That

Before grabbing lunch there, Mia Wall is taking a peek at the restaurant's latest inspection report, right from her cell phone.

"That's awesome," she said, opening for the first time a mobile app that may be the first restaurant health grade app in the nation.

"You know exactly what type of restaurant you're entering and if you're wanting to eat there," said Wall, browsing in the app's "map" view.

Sacramento County officials said their Environmental Health Division is pushing the envelope, pioneering the first system accessible to mobile users on iOS and Android phones, and called "Sac Food" on the App Store and Android Market.

"It is an exciting thing, and it's easy and handy for people to use," said EHD Chief John Rogers, who oversaw the development of the technology.

The app uses GPS navigation to display a map showing all nearby restaurants and their most recent health grades: green for "pass," yellow for "conditional pass" or red for "closed."

"It will have the color coding of the facility on it," said Supervisor Colleen Maitoza, who helped design the app.

Customers can search a particular restaurant or see the "map" view of the whole neighborhood, she said.

A Brookfield's restaurant at Sunrise and Folsom in Rancho Cordova has a green grade a day after getting a "yellow" for temperature issues and not having paper towels in their kitchen -- both problems the restaurant has since fixed.

"If the public can see an inspection report through an app, that's great," the manager told CBS Sacramento. "'Green' [or] 'yellow' -- that doesn't tell the whole story."

And soon customers will be able to pull up inspections by scanning a QR code, or "3D barcode," printed right on the placards restaurants post in their front windows.

It's given Wall some piece of mind, knowing the place where she's eating lunch is up to code.

"I'm glad we're here," she said, smiling.

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