Takeaway Food Hygiene Ratings UK: What Our Analysis of 62,979 Takeaways Reveals

The overall picture: how UK takeaways score

Our database contains 62,979 establishments classified as 'Takeaway/sandwich shop' by the Food Standards Agency. Each one has been inspected and rated on a scale from 0 (urgent improvement necessary) to 5 (very good).

Here is the full breakdown:

The remaining 10,721 takeaways (17.0%) are either awaiting inspection, exempt, or operating under the Scottish system which uses Pass/Improvement Required instead of numeric ratings.

The headline number: only half of UK takeaways earn a top rating. Compare that to 62.3% across all 603,266 food businesses in our database. Takeaways consistently underperform the national average.

Takeaways vs restaurants: who scores worse?

We compared the 62,979 takeaways against the 139,005 restaurants, cafes, and canteens in our database. The gap is clear.

63.6% of restaurants are rated 5. Only 50.5% of takeaways hit the same mark. That is a 13 percentage point gap.

At the bottom end, 4.8% of takeaways score below 3 (rated 0, 1, or 2). For restaurants, that figure is 2.9%. Takeaways are nearly twice as likely to have significant hygiene problems flagged by inspectors.

Why the difference? Takeaway kitchens tend to be smaller. Staff turnover is higher. Many operate as single-owner businesses without dedicated food safety managers. EHO inspectors assess the same three criteria for both, but the 'confidence in management' score often drags takeaway ratings down. When the owner is also the cook, the cleaner, and the bookkeeper, documentation gets deprioritised.

That does not mean all takeaways score poorly. Over 42,000 takeaways hold a rating of 4 or 5. But the tail end of poor performers is longer and heavier than it is for sit-down restaurants.

Which areas have the worst-rated takeaways?

We ranked every local authority area by the percentage of takeaways rated 0 or 1. The results show significant regional variation.

Birmingham tops the raw count with 77 takeaways rated 0 or 1. But Hillingdon in west London has the highest rate: more than 1 in 10 of its takeaways hold the two lowest possible ratings.

Three of the top five worst areas are London boroughs. Waltham Forest and Redbridge both appear in the list. This aligns with the density of takeaway businesses in London and the inspection backlogs some boroughs experienced after COVID.

The local-authority picture gets even sharper when you zoom into postcode districts rather than council boundaries. Our analysis of the 15 UK postcodes with the weakest average hygiene ratings shows how clusters in East London and Birmingham sit inside those broader borough-level trends.

You can check how your local area compares on our area guide pages. Every postcode district has its own breakdown of ratings by business type.

How the big takeaway chains compare

National chains have standardised food safety systems, centralised training, and dedicated compliance teams. Does that show up in the ratings? Mostly yes, but with some notable exceptions. Our coffee chain rankings show the same pattern outside takeaway-heavy brands: Starbucks and Pret cluster near the top, while Caffe Nero leaves a much longer tail of 4s and 3s.

Domino's Pizza stands out. Across 1,118 UK locations, 99% hold a top rating of 5. Only 1% scored below that. Their centralised food safety system and temperature monitoring protocols clearly work at scale.

At the other end, Dixy Chicken has the lowest average rating of any chain with 50+ locations in our database. Fewer than half its 91 outlets score a 5. Fifteen percent are rated below 3. That is more than three times the national takeaway average. Our newer Dixy Chicken benchmark shows the gap has widened further, with 36.1% of analysed sites now rated 3 or below. For the contrast, our Chicken Cottage FHRS analysis shows a competing fried chicken chain where 68.7% of sites are rated 5 and no branch holds a 0 or 1: a materially cleaner lower tail.

Subway is interesting. It is the second-largest takeaway chain in the UK with 1,511 locations. But only 85% are rated 5, putting it behind most major competitors. With a franchise model and variable store sizes, consistency is harder to maintain. You can see the full breakdown on the Subway chain page.

The pattern is clear: chains with strong central compliance systems (Domino's, McDonald's, Greggs) outperform those with looser franchise oversight.

What a rating of 0 actually means for a takeaway

A rating of 0 means 'urgent improvement necessary.' It is the lowest possible score. The FSA gives it when an inspector finds serious food safety failures that pose an immediate risk to public health.

There are currently 180 takeaways in our database rated 0. Another 1,271 are rated 1, meaning 'major improvement necessary.' Together, that is 1,451 takeaways where inspectors found problems serious enough to warrant the two lowest ratings.

A rating of 0 does not automatically close a business. In England and Northern Ireland, displaying your rating is voluntary. A takeaway rated 0 can legally continue operating and choose not to display its score. In Wales, display is mandatory.

The three inspection criteria are food hygiene practices (how food is handled, prepared, and stored), structural compliance (the physical condition of the premises), and confidence in management (whether the business has adequate food safety procedures and records). A takeaway scoring poorly on all three gets a 0.

If you want to check a specific takeaway before ordering, every business in our database has a page showing its current rating, inspection date, and how it compares to the local area average.

The independent takeaway problem

The chain data tells only part of the story. Most UK takeaways are independent. They do not have head office compliance teams or standardised SOPs. And the data shows this matters.

Across the 10 largest takeaway chains, the average percentage rated 5 is 92%. For independent takeaways, that figure drops significantly. The 1,451 takeaways rated 0 or 1 are overwhelmingly independent operators.

This is not about ability. Most independent takeaway owners know their food safety basics. The gap is usually in documentation. EHO inspectors assess confidence in management, which includes whether you have a written food safety management system, temperature logs, and cleaning schedules. A busy owner-operator running a kebab shop until midnight often prioritises cooking over paperwork.

The fix is not complicated. The FSA's Safer Food Better Business (SFBB) pack is free and designed specifically for small takeaways. Digital food safety tools can automate temperature logging for under £30 per month. A food safety management system does not need to be expensive to be effective.

Our data suggests that the takeaways most at risk of a low rating are small, independent, single-site operations in high-density urban areas. If that describes your business, the evidence says investing in documented food safety systems pays off at inspection time.

How we compiled this data

This analysis uses Flux's FHRS database of 603,266 UK food establishments, sourced from the Food Standards Agency's public API and updated weekly. The data snapshot used for this article was taken on 31 March 2026.

We filtered for businesses classified as 'Takeaway/sandwich shop' under the FSA's business type taxonomy. This includes fish and chip shops, pizza takeaways, sandwich bars, kebab shops, Chinese takeaways, Indian takeaways, burger vans, and similar establishments.

Chain rankings are based on our chain matching algorithm, which groups establishments by normalised business name. Locations with 50+ matched outlets are classified as national chains. Smaller chains and independent businesses are counted separately.

Local authority comparisons use the local_authority_name field from the FHRS data. Percentages are calculated against the total number of rated takeaways in each authority area, excluding those awaiting inspection or operating under the Scottish FHIS scheme.

You can explore the full dataset on our rankings page, chain directory, and area guide.