ShopSafe UK
A consumer app that surfaces recent food hygiene inspection scores, pest incidents, and council enforcement actions for UK grocery chains, supermarkets, and restaurants, with proactive alerts when a regular store gets a new notice.
UK grocery shoppers and parents who want to know whether the stores they frequent have hygiene problems
- Hygiene rating lookup for any UK chain or restaurant by name, postcode, or current location
- Push alerts when a chain or store you shop at gets a new council enforcement notice
- Cleaner alternatives nearby when you check in at a flagged store
- Optional loyalty-card or receipt-scan opt-in to track your regular stores' hygiene history
A high-profile £2m fine on a major UK discounter has put retail hygiene into consumer conversation; the underlying council inspection data is already public but hard to find.
B&M £2m fine is real and well-covered (BBC, Mirror, Birmingham Mail, Yahoo) and Google Trends 20K+ spike confirms search interest, but consumer apps for this topic generate very low ratings (e.g. 16 reviews on a 9-month-old competitor), suggesting bursts of curiosity rather than habitual demand.B&M fined £2m over mice infestations at Birmingham stores ↗B&M fined £2 million following Birmingham City Council prosecution over serious food hygiene failings ↗
Market is already crowded: at least five UK consumer hygiene-rating apps exist on the App Store (Food Hygiene: UK Ratings, UK Food Hygiene Ratings, FoodCheck, The UK Food Safety App, Food Hygiene Rating), some launching as recently as late 2025. Differentiation via pest incidents/alerts is plausible but not yet validated.Food Hygiene: UK Ratings - App Store ↗9 Best Food Hygiene Apps for UK Businesses ↗
Competitor 'Food Hygiene: UK Ratings' monetises via IAP (one-off £5.99, monthly £1.99, lifetime £2.99), proving some willingness to pay, but only 16 reviews since Sept 2025 indicates a small monetisable audience; ad-supported + premium alerts could work but ceiling is modest.Food Hygiene: UK Ratings - App Store (IAP pricing shown) ↗
FSA Food Hygiene Rating Scheme is a long-established government programme with open data and stable maintenance; council enforcement data is also permanent public record, so the underlying source data is durable and not subject to fashion cycles.UK food hygiene rating data API - Food Standards Agency ↗Food hygiene ratings - GOV.UK ↗
FSA FHRS API is free, documented and easy to consume, making hygiene scores trivially buildable; however, 'pest incidents' and 'council enforcement actions' are NOT in the FSA dataset and would require scraping/news-monitoring across 400+ UK councils, which is significantly harder and uneven in coverage.Food Hygiene Rating API Help Page ↗UK food hygiene rating data (London) - data.gov.uk ↗