Start on the Washtenaw County Health Department Restaurant Inspection Reports page. It sends readers to different sources for Washtenaw County establishments, University of Michigan establishments, and certain state-regulated establishments. Choose the publisher before searching. A restaurant on U-M property can have an EHS report even though its street address is in Washtenaw County.
| Operation to check | First report source | How the public record is organized |
|---|---|---|
| Food-service establishment outside the U-M EHS program | Washtenaw County’s linked inspection search | Searchable establishment blocks and dated inspection entries |
| Food service on U-M property or another operation specifically covered by EHS | University of Michigan Environment, Health & Safety | Campus building or operation groups with dated report PDFs |
| Grocery, convenience store, food processor, or warehouse regulated by MDARD | MiSafe or MDARD records | Use the Michigan MiSafe or local-health guide to confirm the regulator and history boundary |
A business near campus is not automatically a U-M establishment. Match the physical premises and report publisher. For a mixed retail and food-service operation, confirm which agency licenses the activity you are researching.
Search the county record by identity, then by date
The county-linked Washtenaw inspection search includes fields for Restaurant Name, Address, City, License #, From Date, and To Date, plus a partial-results control. Its Help panel says a name or street fragment can be used and that the two can be combined to narrow results.
Use this order:
- Search a short, distinctive part of the name or street.
- Match the full address and license number before reading an inspection.
- Keep separate establishment blocks separate, even when their names or addresses look similar.
- Put the inspection dates in order and label each Routine Inspection or Follow Up Inspection as displayed.
- Select Show All Inspection Details within the matched establishment block. Retain the Compliance field when it appears, then read the violation class, Food Code section, comments, and corrected notation beneath that dated event.
The county says its online reports are updated every two weeks. That is a posting schedule, not a promise that the newest event is already visible or that the public list is a complete archive. No fixed online-history starting date was verified. If an entry says No details, request the underlying report from the county before drawing a conclusion about its findings.
Washtenaw inspections are not scored
Washtenaw County’s Food Service Inspection Program expressly says Michigan food-service inspections are not scored and recommends reading the entire report. Do not turn Compliant or Non-Compliant into a percentage, letter grade, or permanent safety rating.
The county’s Inspection Report Types page offers examples called Perfect, Typical, and Poor. Those examples help readers consider priority-level findings, repeat items, correction during the visit, and the overall violation pattern. They are interpretive examples, not grades assigned in the search results.
For reports dated after October 1, 2012, the county’s Violation Types page uses three categories. Priority items directly address foodborne-illness hazards. Priority Foundation items support the procedures, equipment, and controls needed for Priority items. Core items cover other sanitation and maintenance requirements. The page gives shorter correction windows to Priority and Priority Foundation items than to Core items and says a follow-up is performed when a Priority or Priority Foundation violation cannot be permanently corrected during the inspection. Use the correction date printed in the actual report. Older reports can use the former Critical and Non-Critical labels; preserve those historical terms rather than reclassifying them.
For a useful comparison, preserve four things from each dated event: the inspection type, the classified finding, what the inspector said was corrected, and any later verification. The site’s guide to reading food inspection violations explains why a corrected item remains part of that inspection’s history.
Use U-M EHS for food service on university property
U-M Food Safety says its Environment, Health & Safety office regulates food service at the Ann Arbor campus and U-M Health System under agreements with Washtenaw County and the State of Michigan. Its listed responsibilities include fixed establishments, special transitory food units, and mobile or temporary food service on U-M property. EHS also identifies small group-housing kitchens associated with the Office of Greek Life and the Inter-Cooperative Council, plus specified temporary events. For those operations, confirm EHS coverage rather than deciding from a campus map alone.
The U-M inspection explanation and inspection-report index work differently from the county search. Expand the campus building or operation group, then open the dated PDF. Some entries also have a separately labeled Follow Up report.
Read the U-M PDF’s inspection type and date, category, repeat status, violation description, correction schedule, corrected field, and closing comments. Keep Correct By separate from Corrected: a deadline does not prove that the work was completed or verified. These fields describe findings and actions, not a numeric score or letter grade.
A follow-up answers a narrower question
Washtenaw County explains that a follow-up may occur after a routine inspection to verify correction. U-M likewise publishes some follow-up PDFs separately. Read the routine report first, identify the item needing correction, then open the later event and see exactly what was checked.
A corrected notation during the routine visit and a later follow-up are different evidence. Neither establishes that every part of the establishment was reevaluated or that conditions remained unchanged afterward. The reinspection and follow-up guide can help align the original finding with the later verification without merging the two visits.
The county’s Enforcement Action page also separates ordinary correction from an imminent health hazard. Non-imminent problems can move from inspection and follow-up through an office conference, an informal hearing, and license action. An imminent hazard can prompt immediate limits on operation or license action. When an establishment is ordered closed, the county says it may reopen after the cited violations are corrected. A follow-up entry alone therefore does not prove that a closure occurred or that reopening was authorized; find the dated action and the later agency decision.
Treat a temporary-closure label as a lead, not the full record
The U-M report index can display Temporarily Closed as plain text. That label alone does not establish that a health violation caused the closure. It supplies neither a dated enforcement order nor a later reopening decision. It also should not be converted into a claim about current status after the page was checked.
For a U-M operation, use the EHS contact shown on its food-inspection pages and ask for the dated closure or suspension record, the inspection that addressed the cited conditions, and the decision that allowed operations to resume. For a county establishment, use the Washtenaw Health Department’s FOIA request page when the public search does not provide the needed record.
Give the custodian the establishment name, physical address, license number if known, and a narrow date range. Name the documents you need: the routine inspection, correction or follow-up record, closure or suspension order, and reinstatement or reopening decision. A records request does not guarantee that every document exists or is releasable, but it avoids treating an old Compliance value, an undated closure label, or a missing online entry as the final answer.
Official sources checked September 27, 2026.