Online food apps delivering from dirty restaurants?

THE recent rise in online food ordering and delivering apps such as Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats have been found to be delivering food from restaurants that have either failed, or narrowly avoided failing inspections relating to food hygiene.

In a recent investigation by the BBC, comparing restaurants with below two star FSA food ratings to delivery company portfolios, figures show that many of the restaurants show one or no stars.

In the alarming figures, a total of 21 outlets had failed to receive a single star in FSA ratings, however they were being advertised on Deliveroo and Just Eat.

The highest proportion of restaurants fell in the Birmingham, Manchester and London areas.

Currently, Deliveroo and Uber Eats are looking into adding hygiene ratings to their listings whilst Just Eat already add a star system to their listed restaurants.

A Deliveroo official told the investigation, “This will help further inform consumers and will sit alongside Deliveroo’s already robust policy to enforce high food hygiene standards.

In an example of the figures, Uber Eats had 30 restaurants that had stars lower than were to be allowed, and four received zero stars, out of 500 restaurants sampled.

Just Eat removed all restaurants owning zero stars in May, but had 4,000 restaurants listed that had one or two stars.

A Just Eat spokesman told British media, “We are at the forefront of raising food hygiene standards across the UK takeaway sector and want all of the restaurants we work with to achieve the highest possible food hygiene rating.”

Uber explained, “Uber Eats takes food hygiene very seriously. Any restaurant found to have a food hygiene rating lower than two will be immediately removed from the Uber Eat’s app.