Which UK delivery apps show your hygiene rating, and where
Restaurant chains assume hygiene display is standardised across UK delivery apps, and it is not. Platforms differ in whether they show a rating at all, where on the listing it sits, how deep a customer must go to find it, and how quickly they refresh it from the public register. The consequence is practical rather than academic: the same site can show a five on one app, a stale three on another, and nothing on a third, with each platform behaving correctly by its own rules.
Why does the display differ if the data is the same?
The register is a source and nothing more. Each platform decides separately what to do with it, and no rule compels any of them. Online display of a hygiene rating is voluntary everywhere in the UK. Wales and Northern Ireland made display mandatory at the premises, and both left themselves a power to extend it to online ordering that neither has used. The FSA’s position on the web is encouragement rather than obligation: “We encourage you to promote your hygiene rating by displaying it on your website or social media pages as well as in your window.”
A platform chooses whether to surface hygiene information, whether to put it on the storefront or behind an information tab, whether to show placeholder states such as awaiting inspection, and how often to re-read the register. None of those choices is published, and none is coordinated between platforms.
So differences between apps are the normal condition, not evidence that one of them is broken.
Where does the rating usually appear?
Behind an information tab and not on the browsing card, and each platform names its own place. Deliveroo states that it “displays partners’ food hygiene ratings in the ‘Restaurant Notes’ section on the platform”, sourced from “a direct feed from the FSA website”, and offers customers a five star filter. Just Eat puts them “on the Business information page”, where the score “is matched to the FSA website and updated daily”, reached through the information symbol in the app or the Information tab on the site.
That placement matters, because it determines how many guests ever encounter it. The FSA has made the same observation about its own audit, noting that a rating on an aggregator is typically found “by opening separate information pages (i.e. behind a ‘click-through’)”.
The more consequential placement is invisible to customers entirely. Platforms use the rating as an eligibility input for promotional programmes, which is where a low rating does its real damage. Just Eat’s Local Legend criteria include an “FSA rating of 3+ or a ‘Pass'”. Deliveroo requires “3 or more, or ‘Awaiting Inspection’/’Pass’/’Exempt'” for Marketer.
So the useful question is not only where a customer sees the rating but where the platform uses it.
How do I check what each of my listings shows?
Open them as a customer, one at a time, and record what you find. There is no partner report that answers this, because the display is a customer-facing artefact rather than an account setting.
For a single restaurant that is ten minutes. For a group of forty sites across three platforms it is one hundred and twenty checks, which is why it is never done, and why stale values persist for months without anybody noticing. Running those hundred and twenty checks on a schedule is the whole of what Kitchain (kitchain.co) contributes here, and the point of it is that the audit is finished before somebody asks for it.
What should I be looking for when I check?
Look for three things, ordered by how expensive each one is to miss.
A value that does not match the public register, which is a real mismatch and a support ticket. A value attached to premises that are not yours, which is a matching error and usually older than anyone realises. And a site showing nothing where comparable listings show something, which often means the platform never matched you at all.
The third is the quietest and the most common on newly opened sites.
Does Scotland work differently?
Yes, and a group trading across the border needs to know it before briefing anybody.
Scotland operates the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, which reports a Pass or Improvement Required and also carries Exempt Premises and Awaiting Inspection states. A Scottish site showing a pass is not missing a rating. It is showing the correct outcome of a different scheme, and display is no more compulsory there than it is in England.
Northern Ireland and Wales sit with England on the numeric scheme, and Wales has its own statutory display requirements for premises, which is a separate matter from what an app chooses to show.
How often should this be reviewed?
Once a quarter per site is proportionate, and immediately after any inspection.
The inspection trigger is the one that pays for itself. A rating changes weeks after the visit, eligibility follows the rating, and nobody is told. A single diary entry per inspection, checked on the date, closes a gap that otherwise runs for a whole quarter.