The catalog, the upkeep, the standard

The Ledger.

A dish-ranking product is worth exactly what its data is worth. So every figure below is drawn straight from the shipping catalog, and the standard that keeps that catalog honest is stated plainly beside it. Made to be audited, not pitched.

Source of truth · the shipping catalog bundled into the app build
Scope · DC / Maryland / Virginia, with staged expansion held separately
Every count on this page is drawn from that catalog. Nothing here is asserted from memory.

N° 01

The catalog, by the numbers.

1174

Dishes in the bundled catalog

637

Venue-verified live dishes · 74.2% of the 859 live dishes

572

Live DMV dishes · DC 214 · MD 178 · VA 180

77%

of the live DMV board is venue-verified (438 of 572)

closed venues, flagged and hidden from every surface

287

expansion-seed dishes across 13 metros — bundled ahead of their city launches

These figures are regenerated from the live catalog, never hand-typed. The 287 expansion-seed dishes are bundled for later city launches; on the live DMV board, 77% of dishes (438 of 572) carry a verified venue, and every remaining dish is still backed by a cited source — never surfaced on nothing.

N° 02

Kept fresh, kept true.

The board isn’t set once and left alone. It’s kept current, and anything that looks stale, closed, or unconfirmed is re-checked against authoritative sources before it’s allowed to stay.

Nothing reaches a reader on automation alone: a person reviews and signs off, and a dish that can’t be confirmed simply doesn’t run.

Nothing reaches a reader without a source, and nothing is published on trust in a machine — a person signs off on every change. — theBEAT editorial standard

N° 03

The audit trail.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, the correction is published openly — including the unflattering ones. A record that only ever flatters isn’t a record worth keeping.

Closed
venues

A venue that closes isn’t deleted — it’s flagged, with the reason kept on the record, and hidden from every surface. What was removed, and why, survives the removal.

Sourced
record

Every finding is written up against the source that supports it, so any call can be traced back to the evidence behind it. Nothing is claimed from memory.

N° 04

The verification standard.

Provenance

Every dish that reaches a reader is backed by an independently verifiable source. There is no silent state where an unsourced dish quietly ranks — if it can’t be stood up, it doesn’t run.

Dietary & safety tags

A dietary tag makes a flat claim only when we hold a dated, first-party source for it — the venue’s own allergen page or menu statement, or a certifying agency for kosher. Without one, the tag still appears, but it asks instead of asserting: “ask about gluten,” not “gluten free.” A source that lapses ages back into that asking state on its own. And when a dish’s own description contradicts a tag, the tag is removed outright — missing evidence downgrades, contradicting evidence deletes. Under-tagging is harmless; over-tagging can hurt someone — so the standard fails toward caution, every time.

No fabricated evidence, ever. A guessed fact is a defect. When in doubt, cut. — theBEAT verification standard