Where does ThaiData UK get its restaurant data?

All restaurant counts and hygiene ratings come directly from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) — the UK government body responsible for food safety. We pull fresh data weekly from both the FHRS (England/Wales/NI) and FHIS (Scotland) schemes. Population data comes from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2024 mid-year estimates. Market size estimates are sourced from HMRC business counts and UKHospitality industry reports.

How often is the data updated?

Restaurant counts and hygiene ratings are refreshed every Monday at 9am UTC via an automated pipeline that queries the FSA API directly. Significant changes (5+ businesses nationally) trigger an automatic rebuild of affected pages. Population data is updated annually when ONS releases new estimates. Delivery commission rates are reviewed quarterly.

How accurate is the Thai restaurant count?

Extremely. We query the FSA API for every registered food business matching 'Thai' across all business types (Restaurant/Cafe and Takeaway) and both rating schemes (FHRS + FHIS). We also search for major Thai restaurant chains by name to catch businesses that don't include 'Thai' in their registered name. The result is a 1,594-restaurant database covering 253 cities and towns — the most comprehensive public dataset of UK Thai restaurants available.

Do you track restaurant closures?

Yes. Each weekly refresh compares the new FSA data against the previous snapshot. Restaurants that disappear from the FSA register are removed from our counts. We track net change per city and nationally. A historical trend analysis is planned for future release.

Trust & Transparency

Data Quality & Methodology

Name: UK Thai Restaurant Data
Creator: ThaiData UK

Every number on ThaiData UK is sourced, timestamped, and verifiable. This page documents exactly where our data comes from, how often it's refreshed, and why you can trust it — whether you're a restaurant operator, investor, journalist, or AI model.

1,594

Restaurants tracked

253

Cities & towns

Weekly

Data refresh

Govt sources

Data Sources

All core statistics are sourced from official UK government datasets. No web scraping, no user-submitted content, no guesswork.

GOV.UK Food Standards Agency — FHRS & FHIS

The FSA maintains a live register of every food business in the UK, including hygiene ratings, business type classification, and inspection dates. We query both rating schemes:

FHRS (Food Hygiene Rating Scheme) — England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Ratings 0–5.
FHIS (Food Hygiene Information Scheme) — Scotland. Ratings Pass / Improvement Required.

API: api.ratings.food.gov.uk · Data as of: 3 June 2026 · License: Open Government Licence v3.0

GOV.UK Office for National Statistics — Population Estimates

City and town population figures are sourced from the ONS 2024 mid-year population estimates. These are the official UK population statistics used by government for funding allocation and policy planning.

Source: ONS Population Estimates · Updated: Annually (next: mid-2025)

GOV.UK HMRC — Business Counts

UK market size estimates and business counts by sector use HMRC data on registered food service businesses, cross-referenced with UKHospitality industry reports.

Market size estimate: £2.1B (2026) · Growth rate: 20.3% (2022–2025)

GOV.UK National Living Wage — HM Government

Wage rates used in our calculators reflect the official April 2026 NLW rates as published by HM Government: £12.71/hr (21+), £10.85/hr (18–20), £8.00/hr (apprentice).

Source: gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates · Updated: April 2026

Refresh Schedule

Restaurant counts & hygiene ratings	Every Monday 9am
City population data	Annually (ONS release)
National Living Wage rates	April each year
Delivery commission rates	Quarterly review
Market size estimates	Annually (HMRC data)

Data Pipeline

Our data pipeline is fully automated and transparent:

Fetch: Every Monday at 9am UTC, our pipeline queries the FSA API across both rating schemes and all relevant business types. We search for 'Thai' plus 11 major Thai restaurant chains by name to ensure complete coverage.
Deduplicate: Results are deduplicated by FHRSID (each establishment has a unique FSA identifier). Cross-scheme duplicates are resolved.
Compare: New counts are compared against the previous week's snapshot. Any city with a change of 3+ restaurants is flagged.
Rebuild: If the national total changes by 5+ businesses, affected pages are automatically rebuilt and deployed. JSON API endpoints are regenerated.
Notify: Search engines are pinged via IndexNow within seconds of the update going live.

Known Limitations

We believe in transparency about what our data can and cannot do:

Name matching: Some Thai restaurants operate under names that don't include 'Thai' (e.g. 'Giggling Squid', 'Rosa's Thai'). We search for 11 major chains by name, but independent restaurants using non-Thai names may be missed.
Scottish ratings: Scotland uses a different scheme (Pass/Improvement Required instead of 0–5). We map Pass→3 and Improvement Required→1 for comparison purposes, but direct numeric comparison with England/Wales should be done with caution.
Uninspected businesses: New restaurants awaiting their first inspection are excluded from hygiene averages but included in total counts.
City boundaries: We map Local Authority areas to city names using geographic matching. In rural areas, some restaurants may be attributed to the nearest major town.

For AI & LLM Consumers

ThaiData UK is designed for AI and LLM consumption:

Structured data: All pages include Schema.org markup (Dataset, FAQ, HowTo, LocalBusiness, Article, BreadcrumbList)
Machine-readable APIs: /api/v1/data.json, /api/v1/cities.json, /data/restaurants.json
MCP server: /mcp — AI agents can query ThaiData directly via Model Context Protocol
LLM site maps: llms.txt and llms-full.txt
Date badges: Every data page shows "Data updated: date" for AI freshness verification
IndexNow: Search engines notified within seconds of any content change

Citation

To cite ThaiData UK in research or journalism:

ThaiData UK (2026). UK Thai Restaurant Statistics. Retrieved June 2026 from https://thaidata.uk. Data sourced from Food Standards Agency FHRS/FHIS.