How Data Made Me a Believer in New York City’s Restaurant Grades

A friend who runs a NYC restaurant, and who hates DOH inspections, nonetheless tells me that the A/B/C regime and stricter rules have made his restaurant cleaner. He's just not sure it's a good tradeoff.

And it's true: health departments have the ability to create a huge number of regulations without any concern for whether they make the public better off. I am told that in NYC, restaurants cannot allow dogs into outdoor cafe spaces. I don't have any idea what the food safety rationale for that regulation is, but I'm deeply skeptical that it makes people better off rather than allowing restaurant owners to manage it themselves.