Wetherspoon and Pret a Manger top food hygiene rankings
Pub firm JD Wetherspoon and fast food chain Pret a Manger are the two major food chains with the best hygiene.
That's according to new figures from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme.
The rating scheme ranks food outlets with a score ranging from zero to five, where zero denotes that "urgent improvement is necessary", and five indicates "very good".
The FSA has published the percentage of the 0-5 ratings of the 20 largest food chains.
While 83.7% of outlets owned by the biggest high street food chains were given the best food hygiene rating of five, the top performers were Pret and Wetherspoon. Each had the highest proportion of fives, scoring 93.1%.
Catriona Stewart, who heads up the FSA's Food Hygiene Ratings Scheme said: "Our latest data shows how seriously high street chains take food hygiene. We want to build on the success of the scheme over its first five years and reduce consumer risk even further by encouraging people to ‘look before they book.'"
"Telling people about hygiene standards in food outlets in a way that is clear and easy to understand has made a real difference. We've seen standards improve and more and more businesses are able to show their customers that they take food hygiene seriously. It's really easy to check the hygiene rating of a food business just go to the Food Standards Agency website at www.food.gov.uk/ratings."
Wetherspoon founder and chairman Tim Martin said: "Food hygiene is of paramount importance to our customers and rightly so.
"Our pub management and staff work hard to ensure that our pubs offer customers the highest levels of food hygiene at all times. We are extremely pleased that our pubs offer the best standards of food hygiene in the FSA ratings over the past five years and we will strive to maintain and improve our ratings in the coming months and years.
"Wetherspoon has 950 pubs across the UK and our aim is to maintain the highest standards at each and every pub."
Pret A Manger's Head of Safety, Jonathan Perkins said: "Each of our 300 UK shops has its own kitchen either on-site or a very short walk away, where our teams prepare fresh menu items throughout the day, every day. When working with large quantities of fresh ingredients, stringent food hygiene practices aren't just important, they're essential. We're proud and committed to seeing our shops continue to achieve top hygiene ratings time after time.
The 20 largest food chains - how they fared
(proportion of outlets with a rating of 5 in brackets)
1= JD Wetherspoon (93.1%)
1= Pret a Manger (93.1%)
3 McDonald's (92.9%)
4 Starbucks (91%)
5 Nando's (90.2%)
6 Domino's Pizza (90.1%)
7 Greggs (89%)
8 Burger King (88.3%)
9 PizzaExpress (87.4%)
10 Frankie & Benny's (83.1%)
11 Costa Coffee (81.4%)
12 Prezzo (79.9%)
13 Pizza Hut (78.6%)
14 Subway (77.7%)
15 KFC (76.9%)
16 Sizzling Pub Co (74.9%)
17 Papa John's (68.5%)
18 Harvester (67.5%)
19 Caffe Nero (66.9%)
20 Hungry Horse (66.1%)
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