For a Wisconsin restaurant or other retail food facility, begin by identifying who performed the inspection. The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection publishes separate official links for state inspection reports and agent health department reports. The state link opens DATCP’s My Health Department portal. The agent link opens a directory of local health departments.
At a glance
- Score: report only. DATCP and its local agents list violations that need correction, with no score or grade.
- How often: at least once per licensing period (ATCP 75.20).
- Most serious violations: Priority items, then Priority Foundation; Core items are the lower tier.
- Checked: DATCP pages and ATCP 75 checked October 21, 2026.
Restaurant Inspection Check tool · rules checked October 21–23, 2026
Inspection score reader
Pick the program that inspected the restaurant, then enter what the report or door sign shows. The reader explains it on that agency's own scale and tells you what usually happens next.
That fork matters because the two routes are not duplicate statewide searches. A county option in DATCP’s state portal does not mean every food facility in that county is state-inspected. A local agent may hold the report instead, and its search fields, history window, scoring method, and follow-up labels can differ.
Choose the record custodian before searching
Use the agency named on a report, license, inspection notice, or facility posting when one is available. If that is unclear, start with the two routes DATCP identifies.
| Record situation | Official starting point | What to confirm |
|---|---|---|
| DATCP performed the inspection | Wisconsin DATCP inspection portal | Facility name, street address, food-service license type, inspection purpose, and date |
| A city, county, village, or consortium health department acted as the state agent | Wisconsin agent department directory | The responsible department and its own facility-report route |
| Custodian is uncertain | Check the inspector or licensing agency shown on the facility’s documents | Whether the record belongs to DATCP or a named local agent before treating a blank result as missing |
The agent directory can be viewed by department or county. It includes separate municipal and county programs, so a mailing address alone may not identify the right system. The site’s city-by-city directory can help organize the jurisdiction question, but the official Wisconsin agency route should control the final choice.
Use DATCP filters without turning a category into a grade
The DATCP state portal offers a single free-text “Locate an establishment” box. Start with a recognizable part of the establishment name, then compare the returned address. The interface provides no search-field specification, so a failed permit-number or address query should not end the lookup; try the name and browse filters.
The browse controls are more explicit. They include:
- a date range;
- inspection purpose, including Routine, Re-Inspection, 2nd Re-Inspection, Pre-Inspection, Administrative Follow-Up, and Follow-Up variants;
- county; and
- license type.
Food-related license types include serving-meals and not-serving-meals establishments, with Prepackaged, Simple, Moderate, and Complex variants, along with school, mobile, base, transient, micro-market, and vending categories. Choose the license type that matches the operation. “Simple,” “Moderate,” and “Complex” are licensing categories tied to the operation, not consumer letter grades and not conclusions about current safety.
When a result appears, match the official name and full street address before opening the inspection. Then check the program, license type, inspection purpose, and date. A hotel, school, market, campground, or shared address may contain a food operation alongside another DATCP-regulated program. The word “inspection” by itself does not prove that the record is a restaurant food inspection.
Read the state report as findings, not as a score
The DATCP reports checked on September 27, 2026 did not display a numeric score or letter grade. They showed item-level compliance and narrative fields. The legend uses:
- IN for in compliance;
- OUT for out of compliance;
- N/O for not observed;
- N/A for non-applicable; and
- COS for corrected on-site.
Reports may include certified food manager information, equipment and food temperatures, warewashing details, numbered food-code observations, and corrective actions. Start with the facility identity, inspection purpose, and date. Then preserve each observation’s own status, narrative, cited rule, corrective action, and correction date.
Wisconsin’s ATCP 75, sections 75.20 and 75.10 requires inspection reports to describe the violation and its location, identify the governing rule, state the corrective action taken or required, and set a correction deadline unless the report says otherwise. The current rule requires public internet access to inspection reports. It does not make one local scoring system a statewide formula.
Milwaukee illustrates the local variation. The City of Milwaukee publishes a separate weighted score and letter-grade method described in the site’s Milwaukee inspection search guide. Do not calculate a Milwaukee-style grade from a DATCP state report, and do not apply Milwaukee’s thresholds to another agent department.
Keep correction dates and later visits separate
The rule’s correction timing depends on the type of item and the inspector’s direction:
| Item type | Current ATCP 75 timing |
|---|---|
| Priority | Additional time, when DATCP or the agent allows it, may not exceed 72 hours after the inspection |
| Priority Foundation or HACCP plan deviation | Maximum 10 calendar days after the inspection |
| Core | Deadline agreed to or specified by the regulator, no later than 90 calendar days unless an approved written compliance schedule extends it without creating a health hazard |
These periods do not prove that correction occurred. A date is a deadline; COS records a correction during that visit; a Re-Inspection or Follow-Up is a separate event. If the first report leaves an item open, return to the same facility history and look for a later visit whose purpose and date connect it to the original finding.
Wisconsin’s enforcement rule allows DATCP or an agent to reinspect when an inspection or complaint investigation reveals a potentially hazardous violation. It also requires enough time for the license holder to correct the deficiency. That standard does not make every OUT item an automatic reinspection, and it does not make a later routine visit proof that every earlier item was verified.
Treat closure and operating status as separate evidence
The checked DATCP report pages did not expose a dedicated current open-or-closed field. Do not infer closure from an OUT item, a repeated observation, a Complex license category, or the absence of a newer report.
The current rule separates several actions. A license holder must immediately discontinue operations and notify DATCP or its agent if an imminent health hazard may exist. DATCP may order dangerous equipment, a facility, or a practice stopped until correction is confirmed. Failure to comply with a written correction order can lead to license suspension or revocation proceedings.
For a closure question, look for the explicit order or notice, its date and basis, and the later agency action that addresses reopening or license status. A past shutdown does not prove the facility remains closed. A later inspection does not erase the earlier order.
Read portal dates and history limits cautiously
The state portal’s browse screen displayed a default range beginning January 1, 2019 during the check, and the facility history examined contained separate 2025 and 2026 inspections. That establishes that the interface can show multiple dated records. It does not establish a guaranteed 2019 start date for every facility or prove that older records do not exist.
DATCP’s consumer page still displayed a note saying inspection reports were current as of April 4, 2024, while the linked state portal showed inspections dated in September 2026. Preserve both facts if freshness matters. Use the date on the individual inspection and record when you checked it; do not treat the landing-page note as proof that inspections stopped in 2024.
If a state-inspected record is missing or older than the visible history, use DATCP’s Public Records page. Provide the facility name, full address, approximate inspection date, inspection type, and any known license or facility identifier. If a local agent holds the record, contact that department instead of assuming DATCP is the custodian.
If the first search is blank, confirm the agency, widen the license-type and date filters, and retry a shorter name before requesting the record. Save the matched facility address, custodian, inspection date and purpose with each finding and later action. Those details let another reader distinguish an unsuccessful search from an actual report with no cited violations.
Local agents set some of their own rules on top of the state code. In Waukesha County, for example, the Waukesha County reinspection guide explains when a return visit and a partial inspection fee apply.
Official sources checked September 27, 2026.