New app allows users to see restaurant health inspections

It’s likely that diners would not want to eat at a place that scored a low rating during its latest health inspection. But it’s also a possibility that many diners don’t look up the results of those inspections — or if they do, they’re hard to find.

Thankfully for El Paso diners, there’s now an app for that.

Spectrum Solutions, an El Paso-based social marketing company, just launched the mobile application called Soupfly.

It was the brainchild of the company’s leadership, when president Andreas Jantos and his family got sick shortly after eating at a local restaurant.

“Turns out, that restaurant had a really low health code rating; they almost failed,” Spectrum vice president Juan Hernandez told ABC-7. “I found out you can find the health score ratings on the El Paso city website, but it was really hard to navigate and find what was what, so we put it in an app.”

Soupfly, which is available for both Apple and Android phones, was launched in El Paso in April. It compiles the city’s database of health inspections for all eating establishments, from school cafeterias to exclusive restaurants.

“We try to keep the data as fresh as possible, but sometimes it’s not under our control. It depends on the city’s health departments and how fast they get that data onto the database,” said Hernandez.

Hernandez said about a hundred people use it daily.

It’s something I would use, if I had the IT skills to use it,” said Richard Esper, laughing as he scrolled through the list of ratings in the app while he dined at Nuovo Cappetto in the Cincinnati entertainment area Wednesday evening. “I think a lot of people would be interested in using it.”

“By showing how easy it is to make this data accessible through mobile devices, there’s a hope that the city will stay on top of the database and keep it up to date and put a little more value into it,” said Hernandez.

And, Hernandez added, help avoid the discomfort that spawned the creation of the app.