Consider it the Yelp of health codes.
Conveying data from the New York City Health Department with emoji, NYC software engineer and NYU grad Justin Iso has launched a site, Eat Safe NYC, meant to help city diners make informed decisions of where to get their next meal.
When users visit Eat Safe NYC, they can type the name of a restaurant into the site's search bar, and then review the health code violations the eatery has received in the past.
Next to the violation is an emoji, apparently meant to make violations such as live mice, filth flies and inadequate personal cleanliness seem a bit less menacing — and make knowledge about public health seem more fun.
Iso, 24, got the idea to make the app after experiencing a bout of food-related sickness himself.
"I started researching food safety best practices after giving myself food poisoning about a year ago, and have been interested in the food industry ever since," Iso said.
Iso's use of emoji was born out necessity. Eat Safe NYC was originally an SMS-based app, Iso said, and would provide users with text-based responses to their restaurant search — but those responses were a little too long for his app to work well.
"Each violation can be up to four or five sentences," Iso said. "And no one wants to read [them] in a text message."
"I needed a concise and fun way to show that a restaurant wasn't washing their raw vegetables ... and the emoji stuck as a way to keep people interested," Iso added.
"My hope is that the app both helps people understand the grading process and makes it easy to understand the specific violations," Iso said.
If you don't have the stomach for looking up your favorite eatery's health history, you can take a peek at what Iso's site looks like in the screenshots below:
