In the 12 months from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026, the Cincinnati Health Department opened 3,904 routine inspection records at 2,829 licensed food facilities. The first visit ended “Not In Compliance” in 643 of them (16.5%), “Approved – Minor Violations” in 2,162 (55.4%) and “Approved – No Violations” in 1,095 (28.0%); 4 had another status. 632 of the 643 Not In Compliance records already show at least one return visit under the same record, and the median record reached an “Approved” status 11 days after the first visit.
These are our counts from the city’s open dataset, Cincinnati Food Safety Program (dataset rg6p-b3h3, refreshed daily; downloaded October 24, 2026, with visits through October 22). To look up one restaurant, use the city’s CHD Food Inspection and Violation Records dashboard, linked from the Health Department’s Food Safety Inspections and Records page.
How a Cincinnati inspection record works
Cincinnati inspects food service operations and retail food establishments inside city limits under the Ohio Uniform Food Safety Code (OAC 3717-1). The Health Department says each facility gets at least one unannounced visit a year and that routine visits are scheduled by the facility’s food processes and risk. Addresses elsewhere in Hamilton County are usually inspected by Hamilton County Public Health instead; our Hamilton County inspection search guide covers that system.
Each inspection record has an ID (RECORDNUM_INSP in the data) and can hold several dated visits. Records in the data follow three steps:
- First visit. The inspector records violations by Ohio code section, and the visit gets a status: Not In Compliance, Approved – Minor Violations or Approved – No Violations.
- Follow-up visits. Under the same record, the inspector returns. In our year, 520 of the 643 Not In Compliance records had one return visit, 95 had two and 17 had three or more.
- Close-out. Most records close with an “Approved – Violations Abated” or “Approved – Minor Violations” visit. As of October 22, 2026, 19 of the 643 records had no approved visit yet, and 11 had no return visit recorded.
The city’s data dictionary describes ACTION_STATUS only as the status of the inspection and any violations issued; it gives no written definition for each label. Read the labels by what happened next in the record, and call the program at 513-564-1751 if a status on a specific report is unclear.
Cincinnati results by inspection type
Cincinnati runs two main kinds of routine visit. The Health Department describes a routine inspection as an unannounced, complete review of all regulatory items, and a critical control point inspection (a process review at retail stores) as one that analyzes recipes and tracks potentially hazardous foods from the loading dock to the table. The data labels the first kind “standard inspection.”
| Routine visit type (first visit) | Records | Not In Compliance | Approved – No Violations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard inspection | 2,282 | 280 (12.3%) | 822 (36.0%) |
| Critical control point | 1,553 | 346 (22.3%) | 264 (17.0%) |
| Process review (retail) | 68 | 17 (25.0%) | 9 (13.2%) |
First visits marked Not In Compliance averaged 9.5 recorded violations, against 4.1 for visits marked Approved – Minor Violations. Over the year, 543 facilities (19.2% of the 2,829 inspected) had at least one routine record that opened as Not In Compliance. Most facilities had one routine record in the year (1,907), 784 had two and 138 had three or more.
Complaint inspections are a small share of the work: 224 complaint records in the same year. Of those, 156 (69.6%) found no violations, and 25 (11.2%) opened as Not In Compliance.
How long Cincinnati follow-up takes after Not In Compliance
- Approved within 7 days of the first visit: 37.9% of records
- Approved within 14 days: 63.9%
- Approved within 30 days: 87.1%
- Median time to the first approved visit: 11 days
So a Not In Compliance entry on the dashboard is usually a short-lived state. Open the record and check the dates of the later visits before drawing conclusions: a restaurant with a Not In Compliance visit last week and an approved visit three days later is in a different position from one with three return visits in a row. For how other cities handle the same step, see what happens after a failed health inspection in four cities.
The violations Cincinnati inspectors write most often
Codes below are sections of OAC 3717-1 as they appear in the dataset (3717-1-04.5(D) is shown as 4.5(D)). Shares are of the 3,904 routine first visits and of the 643 that opened as Not In Compliance.
| Code | What it covers | All first visits | Not In Compliance visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.5(D) | Cleaning frequency of nonfood-contact surfaces | 14.5% | 26.1% |
| 6.4(B)(1) | Cleaning of the physical facilities | 12.6% | 29.1% |
| 2.4(A)(3) | Certified manager (demonstration of knowledge) | 12.5% | 26.0% |
| 4.4(A)(2) | Equipment in good repair | 11.7% | 23.6% |
| 4.5(A)(1) | Food-contact surfaces and utensils clean | 11.1% | 32.0% |
| 3.2(D) | Food containers labeled with the food’s name | 10.7% | 18.8% |
| 2.4(C)(18) | Written vomit and diarrhea cleanup procedure | 10.3% | 19.8% |
| 3.4(F)(1)(b) | Cold holding of time/temperature control foods | 9.5% | 23.3% |
Some less common codes show up mostly on Not In Compliance visits. Among codes cited on at least 60 first visits, the highest shares were the consumer advisory for raw or undercooked food, 3.5(E) (71 of 82 visits), pest control, 6.4(K) (78 of 100), and the sanitizing frequency of food-contact surfaces, 4.6(C)(3) (68 of 101). If a report you are reading lists pests or cold-holding temperatures, look for the follow-up visit that cleared them. Our comparison of the most common violations in five cities shows the same cleaning and temperature items near the top elsewhere.
Not In Compliance rates by Cincinnati neighborhood
The dataset tags each facility with a neighborhood. For the 18 named neighborhoods with at least 60 routine records in the year, the share of first visits marked Not In Compliance ranged from 4.0% to 28.5%.
| Neighborhood | Routine records | Not In Compliance |
|---|---|---|
| Westwood | 193 | 28.5% |
| Clifton | 99 | 28.3% |
| Avondale | 100 | 25.0% |
| East Price Hill | 83 | 24.1% |
| West Price Hill | 92 | 21.7% |
| Madisonville | 132 | 21.2% |
| Oakley | 194 | 19.1% |
| Corryville | 98 | 18.4% |
| Walnut Hills | 115 | 18.3% |
| Roselawn | 70 | 17.1% |
| Evanston | 66 | 15.2% |
| CUF (Clifton Heights, University Heights, Fairview) | 302 | 14.9% |
| Downtown | 725 | 11.2% |
| Hyde Park | 121 | 10.7% |
| Over-the-Rhine | 285 | 10.5% |
| Northside | 98 | 10.2% |
| College Hill | 78 | 7.7% |
| West End | 75 | 4.0% |
Use these rates as background when reading one report. The mix of inspection types differs by area, and critical control point visits end Not In Compliance nearly twice as often as standard visits (22.3% vs 12.3%). Facility mix matters too: the dataset covers restaurants, grocery stores, schools and other licensed food operations together.
How we counted
- Unit: one inspection record (RECORDNUM_INSP). Its first visit date put it in the October 2025 to September 2026 window, and its first visit status is the one counted.
- Facilities: distinct license record IDs (RECORDNUM_LICENSE).
- Status labels changed in 2024: the current labels first appear in March and April 2024, and older labels such as “Not Abated” ran until June 2025. We compare only the latest 12 months, when the current labels were used throughout.
- Violation shares count each code once per first visit.
If you need the report itself rather than the data row, the dashboard shows each visit, and the city takes requests through its public records request page. Our guide to Cincinnati food inspection records covers which report to ask for. Cincinnati Health Department pages and dataset checked October 24, 2026.