The City of Farmers Branch adopted the current Texas Food Establishment Rules, as well as the state inspection form that was adopted with these rules, in September 2000. This inspection form  focuses more on critical violations observed in a food establishment such as potentially hazardous food temperature violations rather than non-critical items such as structural or sanitation problems (i.e. floors or walls needing repair or cleaning). Non-critical items will still be noted on the form, but will not be factored into the overall score. All 5 & 4 point demerits require immediate corrective action. All 3 point demerits require corrective action to be completed within 10 days. If the cumulative demerit value of an establishment exceeds 30 demerits which means a score of 70 or below, the establishment must initiate immediate corrective action on all identified critical violations and must initiate corrective action on all other violations within 48 hours. The demerit points, violation number, and violations are listed in the table below: 

Grading Criteria  Inspections are scored on a demerit system and then given a numerical grade. The fewer the violations found the lower the demerit accumulation with 100 being a perfect score. The grading criteria is as follows:

Grading Results

Food  establishments are listed alphabetically by the specialty of food served such as Chinese, Italian, Seafood, etc. Occasionally, a food establishment will serve a variety of foods and will not fit under a particular category. These will be listed under Variety. The specific violation or violations are listed by the number that corresponds to the above key. Food establishments will also be listed according to the type of their operation such as full service restaurants, grocery stores, cafeterias, etc. The score will be entered numerically from zero to thirty or above.  It is important to remember when looking at the overall score to keep in mind the operation being conducted at that facility. A full service restaurant for example that prepares meals from scratch is involved in more complex operations and processing than a convenience store that sells only pre-packaged food items. Also, any inspection is a "snapshot" of the day and time of the inspection. On any given day, a restaurant could have more or less violations than noted at the time and date the inspection was made and may not be representative of the overall, long-term cleanliness of an establishment. Also, important to remember is at the time of the inspection violations are recorded on the inspection form but are often corrected on-the-spot prior to the health inspector leaving the establishment.