The city records violations as one long text blob per inspection, so nothing can group them. We parse a year of them and rank the code by how often each section is really cited.
Citations
Inspections scanned
Cited something
Code sections used
“Ends in a fail” is association, not cause. It is the share of inspections carrying a citation that were failed outright — and a citation that turns up beside nine others is keeping bad company as much as it is doing the damage. Codes cited fewer than 25 times are left unrated rather than given a number that would be noise.
Citations47Kin the year to Oct 13, 2026
Inspections scanned17Kfrom Oct 13, 2025
Cited something66%10,949 inspections
Code sections used58most cited: 55
“Ends in a fail” is association, not cause. It is the share of inspections carrying a citation that were failed outright — and a citation that turns up beside nine others is keeping bad company as much as it is doing the damage. Codes cited fewer than 25 times are left unrated rather than given a number that would be noise.
58 codes · 47,131 citations in the window
CodeWhat it coversCitedEnds in a failOver the year
Counted from the Food Inspections violations field, Oct 13, 2025 to Oct 13, 2026. The city renumbered its code in July 2018, so older inspections use different section numbers — which is why this page covers a single recent year rather than the whole record.
What Chicago food inspectors cite most · chicago.fyi