Getty Images
In Orange County, green means eat. Red means it's time to find a new restaurant.
If you can read a stoplight, then you can choose your Orange County restaurants wisely.
Starting Thursday, OC restaurants will receive one of three stickers from the Orange County Health Care Agency:
The system is similar to the one used in Sacramento. In Los Angeles, restaurants are graded with letters. Restaurant owners appear happy with the decision to use a color-coded system, the Daily Breeze reported:
Restaurant owners are just happy the county didn't adopt the letter-grade system in Los Angeles County, said Pam Waitt, president of the Orange County Restaurant Association.
"They like it a lot better than the A-B-C grades," Waitt said. "They felt like that was a bit of a scarlet letter. Basically anything that wasn't an A was a flunking grade."
That's not fair because a restaurant might get an F one day for a broken water heater and that's a lot less egregious than some violations, Waitt said.
"That's not entirely fair because there's a big difference between a broken water pipe and a rodent problem," Waitt said. "Diners need to know that."
For diners who want more information about a restaurant, incident reports are available at ocfoodinfo.com.