Sioux Falls restaurant inspections: what the score counts

Restaurants inside the Sioux Falls city limits are inspected by the City of Sioux Falls Health Department, not by the state. The South Dakota Department of Health's own inspection search says so directly, sending anyone looking up a Sioux Falls establishment to the city's site instead.

A deduction is worth what the risk is worth

An inspection starts at 100 and violations subtract points by category, and the weights carry more meaning than the total. Five points come off for cross contamination, for employee hygiene, for the cooking or cooling of potentially hazardous food, and for holding temperature during display, service and transport. Four points for sanitizing equipment and utensils, for cold and hot storage equipment, and for the person-in-charge requirement. Three for handwashing sinks and supplies, and for insect and rodent control. Worth a single point each, at the bottom of the scale, are the items most people picture when they hear "health violation": a stained ceiling tile, a garbage lid propped open, shelving out of repair, a mop left in the sink instead of hung to dry.

Two kitchens can post the same number having done nothing alike. A 95 built from five ceiling-and-shelving notes is a different place from a 95 with one temperature deduction in it.

Where the record is

The city publishes results at sweepsdata.siouxfalls.gov, searchable by name or by letter and filterable to restaurants or to groceries. A facility's page carries its last two inspections: the date, the score, each violation, its point value, and the inspector's own sentence describing what was seen. Those two reports usually land about six months apart.

The person-in-charge line traces back to a state rule, ARSD 44:02:07:03, which requires at least one person on staff to have passed an eight-hour food service training and certification program.

The number separates less than it looks

Of roughly 950 restaurant and food service entries in the city's database this August, about four in ten showed a last score of 100, and fewer than one in twenty sat below 90. Almost everything is bunched at the top, so the number by itself sorts very little. The inspector's sentence is where the detail is. The state attaches the caution that covers both: an inspection is "a 'snapshot' of the day and time of the inspection."

General information, current as of August 2026. Inspection records and food service rules change; the city's inspection search and the Department of Health hold the current version.