Millions of inspection records. In one place, in one format.
Our Customers
About Us
Hazel Analytics pairs the largest food safety inspection database with powerful analytics tools and solutions for Fortune 500s and leading organizations in the restaurant, financial services, government, and education industries.
Our Food Safety Insights (FSI) and Facility Risk Insights (FRI) products transform diffuse and disparate local health department data into actionable intelligence using our proprietary Hazel Score methodology.
Hazel Analytics is also the proud recipient of Jack in the Box's 2016 Food Safety Innovation Award.
The Problem with Retail Food Safety Data
Across the U.S., local health departments conduct regular food safety inspections for millions of retail outlets, including restaurants, grocers, convenience stores, food trucks, and institutional cafes.
Many health departments make this inspection data available online. This is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough. The problem is that the data is not available in a standardized format or easily consumable for even basic analytical purposes.
Our Award-Winning Solution:
Hazel Food Safety Insights™ (FSI)
A software platform that in near real-time collects millions of inspections from hundreds of health department jurisdictions, enabling chain food retail-operators to protect their brand and manage their compliance.
Powering our analytics capabilities, is our proprietary Hazel Score™ system. Developed and proven through years of university research, the Hazel Score enables relative comparisons of food safety and inspection compliance performance across jurisdictions. Our customers leverage insights from the Hazel Score to improve decision-making in industries ranging from food retail to financial services.
Research
Our founding team has decades of research experience with food safety and regulatory inspections data stemming from Stanford, UCLA, and the University of Maryland College Park. Much of this research has been published in top academic journals around the world and its output has been adopted by companies and policy makers in the US and abroad. Below is a small sample of that research:
Inspection Technology, Detection and Compliance: Evidence from Florida Restaurant Inspections
Published in RAND Journal of Economics (Winter, 2014) by Ginger Jin, Chief Data Scientist
Quality Disclosure and Certification: Theory and Practice
Published in Journal of Economic Literature (April, 2010) by Ginger Jin, Chief Data Scientist
Impact of Restaurant Hygiene Grade Cards on Foodborne Disease Hospitalizations in Los Angeles County
Published in Journal of Environmental Health (March, 2005) by Phillip Leslie, Strategy Advisor and Ginger Jin,Chief Data Scientist
Our Team
Arash Nasibi
Chief Executive Officer
Ginger Jin
Chief Data Scientist
Ben Bederson
Chief Technology Officer
Alex Quinn
Technical Advisor
Enming Luo
Operations & Customer Success
Gentry Johnson
Data Scientist
Richard To
Software Engineer
Luke Gordon
Software Engineer
Andrew Harrison
Software Engineer
Zaki Abdullah
Software Engineer
Alex Tan
Software Engineer
Ryan Bald
Software Engineering Intern
Please contact us to learn more:
Ben Bederson
Ben has 15 years of experience in developing and studying informational technologies. As a full Professor of Computer Science at UMCP and the former director of the Human Computer Interaction Lab, he co-leads the NSF-funded International Children's Digital Library founded in 2002 (ICDL - www.childrenslibrary.org), and received the 2010 Social Impact Award for his work on ICDL and studying electronic voting machines. Ben is currently Associate Provost of Learning Initiatives at UMD, and is also co-founder and chief scientist at Zumobi, Inc., a startup mobile app publisher.
Ginger Jin
Ginger is a full Professor of Economics at UMCP and has done extensive research in information disclosure and public policy. In addition to studying food safety inspection data in California and Florida, she has examined information issues in prescription drug advertising, health insurance ratings, e-commerce and online data usage. Most of her research involves processing, combining and analyzing big datasets from different sources. She has testified for Maryland House Bill #951 in support of restaurant hygiene grade cards and served on a National Academy committee on a study of food safety and other consequences of publishing establishment-specific data (from USDA).
Enming Luo
A proud veteran, Enming served two tours in Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine Captain. While overseas, he led in partnering with NGOs and local Afghan officials to develop infrastructure in Southern Afghanistan. Enming transitioned to the technology sector after earning his MBA, working in consumer electronics before joining Hazel Analytics. At Hazel, he engages customers, develops relationships, and ensures the success of clients and partners.
Arash Nasibi
Having led the transition of Hazel Analytics from research project to sustainable commercial venture, Arash is responsible for managing the growth and day-to-day operations of the company. Previously, Arash was a founding member of StudentMentor.org, the first free online mentorship platform for U.S. college students. He also has prior experience as a management consultant with a focus on technology and risk serving Fortune 500s. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from UCLA Engineering, and a MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Luke Gordon
Luke joined the team as a software engineer in the summer of 2014. His programming interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and functional programming. He graduated from Cal Poly University, San Luis Obispo with a B.S. in Computer Science. His hobbies include traveling, snowboarding, and camping.
Richard To
Richard works on the Software Engineering team at Hazel Analytics. His goal is to get food inspection reports standardized in the United States and made available online in easy to consume formats. After that he'll consider a run for president. When Richard isn't programming, he enjoys running, playing basketball, reading, and writing fiction.
Alex Tan
Alex is on the software engineering team at Hazel. He previously worked in the Information School at the University of Washington as a research assistant, where he helped construct an intelligent tutoring system. He works mainly in web development, data mining and cloud computing. Alex also teaches Scratch programming and HTML to elementary and middle school students in after school programs across Seattle. He will be obtaining his B.S. in Informatics from UW in Spring of 2018. A fun fact about Alex is that he designed, programmed and deployed an iOS game to the app store during his sophomore year in high school.
Alex Quinn
Alex is an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. While completing his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, he developed the architecture that is at the core of our network of scrapers. Those innovations have allowed us to extract inspection data from over 80 health department web sites, merging a multitude of data formats into a single, searchable database. Alex continues to aid in steering the growth of the technology behind Hazel's services.
Gentry Johnson
Gentry is on the Data Science team at Hazel and is also a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Maryland. In addition to his traditional training in econometrics, he has expertise in machine learning and computational methods. Previously, Gentry was a full-time researcher at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business where he worked on large, high-dimensional consumer data as part of the Kilts Center for Marketing. He is passionate about common-sense interpretation of complex economic and statistical modeling, and places enormous value on good data visualization.
Andrew Harrison
Andrew joined the Software Engineering team at Hazel in May 2018. He comes to Hazel with a decade of experience at startup-stage companies; his previous position focused on growing a web platform for improving data collection, distribution, and analysis at government agencies. He is passionate about data quality, software security, performance metrics, and engineer mentorship. Outside of the office, Andrew volunteers with Ada Developers Academy and enjoys running, swing dancing, and cooking.
Zaki Abdullah
Zaki is on the software engineering team at Hazel. His professional interests include machine learning, data mining, and applied mathematics. Outside of work, Zaki enjoys photography, biking, music, and food. He is also currently completing his degree in Computer Science with a Specialization in Data Science at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Ryan Bald
Ryan joined the Software Engineering team at Hazel in January of 2018. Previously, he was a software engineering intern at another startup, Levyx. Ryan is currently attending the University of Washington for a M.S. in Data Science. He also holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering with a minor in Statistics from the University of California, Irvine. Ryan's interests include playing basketball, watching cinema, and statistics in sports.