All restaurants and takeaways with a zero rated hygiene rating are to be removed from the Just Eat takeaway platform.
It is one of a number of measures as part of the group’s commitment to investing £1 million to raise food hygiene and safety standards across the UK takeaway sector.
The group is to introduce a minimum standard of FHRS rating of 3 for all new restaurant sign-ups and will fund food hygiene and safety improvement programme for restaurants with a food hygiene rating of 2 or lower.
Under the new programme, Just Eat will work with any restaurant on its platform with an official Food Hygiene Rating of zero, one or two to help them improve their rating. Any zero-rated restaurant which does not improve its score by 1 May will be removed from the Just Eat platform until they do so.
In addition, any restaurants seeking to sign up to the Just Eat platform from today will be required to have a minimum Food Hygiene Rating of three by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) or be registered and awaiting inspection by the local authority.
The latest commitment from Just Eat follows its announcement in December 2018 of plans to include the official FSA food hygiene rating of each of its UK restaurant partners directly on its platform both in-app and online. Just Eat continues to make significant updates to its API so that a restaurant’s FSA rating will automatically update if it changes following a local authority inspection.
This means Just Eat will receive a notification if a restaurant falls below a rating of 3 so that it can quickly contact the restaurant to offer access to the new food safety programme.
Displaying FSA ratings is currently underway in Northern Ireland and will be rolled out across the whole of the UK in the coming months. Just Eat has also offered access to Level 2 food hygiene training and certification to every business on the platform since 2016, and in 2018 partnered with Checkit, a digital food safety management software provider, to allow restaurants to access new digital food safety systems at industry-leading rates.
