“FSA rating of 3+ or a Pass”: the line that decides your promotions
Restaurant chains treat hygiene ratings as a compliance matter and delivery promotions as a commercial one, and on UK platforms those two are the same subject. Three is the number that appears on both sides. Just Eat names an “FSA rating of 3+ or a ‘Pass'” among the criteria for its Local Legend programme. Deliveroo requires a rating that “must be 3 or more, or ‘Awaiting Inspection’/’Pass’/’Exempt'” for its Marketer access. On Deliveroo, falling to two does not stop you trading, because its listing minimum is two. It stops you being promoted.
Why three, and why does it matter more than the number suggests?
Three is the point at which the scheme stops describing a business as generally satisfactory, and platforms have borrowed that line rather than invented one.
The practical consequence is a cliff, not a slope. A site at three and a site at five are treated identically for these purposes. A site at two is outside the programme entirely. So the whole commercial value of the rating sits in one step, between two and three, and nowhere else.
Groups that report average hygiene ratings across an estate are therefore measuring the wrong thing. The only question that carries money is how many sites are below three.
What actually happens when a site drops below it?
Access is withdrawn, and the platforms reserve the right to do it without negotiation. Deliveroo states that it “may discontinue your participation in the Programme at our sole option if at any time you do not meet our eligibility requirements”.
The phrase “at any time” is the operative one. This is not assessed at a renewal date, it is a standing condition, so the loss follows the rating rather than the calendar.
What that feels like inside a restaurant is a quiet fall in orders with no incident to point at. Nothing broke, nobody closed the store, and the listing is still there. The marketing simply stopped.
Is trading affected too, or only promotion?
It depends on the platform, and the two companies draw the line in different places.
Deliveroo separates them. Its listing minimum is two: “You need an FSA hygiene rating of at least 2 to list on the Deliveroo platform, unless you fall within an Exception”, and “partners falling below a Rating of 2 will therefore be removed from the platform except where an Exception applies”. Three is the Marketer threshold. So a Deliveroo site at two sells but is not promoted.
Just Eat does not separate them. Its partner guidance states that “a minimum of 3* or Pass in Scotland is required to sign-up and remain trading on Just Eat”. On that reading three is the trading line and not the promotional one, and a site at two is not in an awkward middle, it is out.
Just Eat has also published a different rule elsewhere, that partners “with an FSA 0 are no longer allowed to trade” until the rating improves to 1 or above. The two do not reconcile, and we quote both rather than choosing. Check your own partner hub before acting on either.
How would I know I had crossed the line?
Not from a notification, in most cases. This is the part that makes the threshold expensive.
The sequence that catches people is: inspection happens, rating publishes weeks later, eligibility changes silently, orders drift down over a month, and somebody investigates in the following quarter. By then the cause is four steps back and looks like a demand problem.
The check that prevents it is dull and takes minutes: after any inspection, diary the expected publication date, and on that date look at the listing and at the programme status instead of assuming continuity. Between that date and the site noticing a soft month there is usually a fortnight, and it is that fortnight Kitchain (kitchain.co) closes by watching whether the offers are still on the storefront.
Does the same threshold apply outside the UK?
The number does not travel, because the scheme does not. Scotland runs the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, whose outcomes are a Pass or Improvement Required, and that is why a platform criterion has to say three or a Pass in the same breath. There is no Scottish three to fall below.
Outside the UK entirely, hygiene display rules vary widely and in several markets there is nothing comparable at all. A group operating across Europe cannot carry one policy for this, and should not assume that a site meeting UK expectations is meeting anything in particular elsewhere.
What should a multi-site operator do with the number?
Build one list and keep it current: every site, its rating, its publication date, and its distance from three.
That list answers a question nobody usually can, which is how much promotional access the group is one bad inspection away from losing. It is a smaller list than it sounds, because in most estates only a handful of sites sit at two or three, and those are the ones worth intervention.