About one in five routine restaurant inspections in Allegheny County ends with a required reinspection, even though most of those restaurants keep the green placard. From August 2025 through July 2026, the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) recorded 2,735 comprehensive inspections at 2,569 restaurants. 571 of them (20.9%) were marked as needing a reinspection, and 493 of those 571 still received the green “Inspected & Permitted” placard. To know whether a restaurant has open problems, read its latest report along with the placard.
- Comprehensive (routine) restaurant inspections: 2,735 at 2,569 restaurants
- Reinspection required: 571 (20.9%)
- Placard at those 571 inspections: green 493, Follow Up Required 66, Consumer Alert 9, Ordered to Close 3
- Next visit after a required reinspection: median 14 days; 345 of 426 (81%) within 30 days
- Cleared at the next visit: 368 of 426 (86.4%)
- Restaurants with a Consumer Alert or closure placard at any visit: 44
What Allegheny County’s green, yellow and red placards mean
ACHD’s Alerts, Closures, and Enforcements page describes three placards, and one of them must be displayed at the entrance of every food facility:
- Green, “Inspected and Permitted”: conditions meet requirements.
- Yellow, “Consumer Alert”: unsafe conditions were found and the restaurant may stay open.
- Red, “Closed”: the facility was ordered closed.
ACHD can also assess civil penalties. The inspection data uses a few more labels than the page describes. Across 4,320 restaurant visits in the year, the labels were Inspected & Permitted 4,130, Follow Up Required 114, Inspected / Permit Denied 27, Consumer Alert 24, Ordered to Close 19, Imminent Hazard – Closure 4 and No Entry – Closure 2. The ACHD page does not explain Follow Up Required or Permit Denied; the inspection report for that visit shows the reason.
Which Allegheny County restaurant types needed reinspection most often
| Restaurant type (ACHD category) | Comprehensive inspections | Reinspection required |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant with liquor (201) | 653 | 27.4% |
| Chain restaurant with liquor (202) | 313 | 26.2% |
| Restaurant without liquor (211) | 832 | 21.6% |
| Chain restaurant without liquor (212) | 937 | 13.9% |
| All four types | 2,735 | 20.9% |
Chain restaurants without a liquor license needed a reinspection about half as often as independent restaurants with one. The category comes from the permit, and the data does not say why the rates differ.
Reinspection rates in Pittsburgh and the larger suburbs
Most Allegheny County municipalities have only a few dozen restaurant inspections a year. Four had at least 60: Pittsburgh (713 inspections, 21.7% needing reinspection), Robinson (75, 20.0%), Monroeville (91, 12.1%) and Ross (67, 10.4%).
What happened at the next visit after a required reinspection
- 426 of the 571 had a later visit in the file, which ends July 28, 2026. Of the 145 without one, 73 came in May through July 2026, too late for a follow-up to appear.
- The next visit was a reinspection in 380 cases, a partial reinspection in 28, another comprehensive inspection in 7 and some other visit in 11.
- 368 were cleared at that visit. 58 were flagged for yet another reinspection, 48 of them while keeping the green placard.
- Placard at the next visit: green 407, Follow Up Required 16, Consumer Alert 1, Ordered to Close 1, Permit Denied 1.
For comparison with other places, see what happens when a restaurant fails a health inspection.
Where Allegheny County consumer alerts and closures came from
The 44 restaurants with a yellow or red placard received 49 of them during the year: 23 at comprehensive inspections, 12 at reinspections, 4 during complaint investigations, 4 on service requests, 3 during consultations and 3 at other visits. The reinspection flag and the placard are recorded separately, and 11 of the 23 alerts or closures at comprehensive inspections were not flagged for a reinspection. Closed restaurants reopen through their own inspection, so treat the placard, not the flag, as the sign of a serious problem. ACHD keeps the current list on its Consumer Alerts and Closures page.
How to check one Pittsburgh-area restaurant
- Open ACHD’s Search Inspection Reports page.
- Search by name, then match the street address, since chains share names.
- Open the latest report. Check whether a reinspection was required and which violations were listed, then look for a later reinspection report.
- Check the Consumer Alerts and Closures page for any current alert or closure.
Our Allegheny County inspection search guide walks through the search screens. Outside the county, see Pennsylvania restaurant inspection reports, and for the state’s largest city, Philadelphia’s reinspection timeline.
How we counted
We downloaded the “Food Facility/Restaurant Inspections” table from the WPRDC Allegheny County restaurant inspections dataset on October 25, 2026. It holds inspections from August 2025 to July 28, 2026; the violations table is not available for this period. Restaurants are ACHD categories 201, 202, 211 and 212, and a restaurant is a facility name plus street address. “Comprehensive” covers both comprehensive purpose labels in the data. These are our calculations, not ACHD statistics.
ACHD pages and WPRDC data checked October 25, 2026.