Food Safety and Hygiene Checklist

FDA Food Code Big 6 reporting: vomiting, diarrhea, jaundice, sore throat with fever, lesions on hands, exposure to Norovirus/Salmonella/Shigella/E. coli/Hepatitis A. Document the manager's check-in with each employee at clock-in.

Send the employee home and log the exclusion. Re-admittance for vomiting or diarrhea requires 24 hours symptom-free; jaundice and Hep A exposure require health-department clearance. File the Employee Health Reporting Agreement copy.

20 seconds, soap and 100°F+ water, at a designated handwash sink — never the prep or three-bay sink. Required after restroom, between raw and ready-to-eat tasks, after eating, after touching face or apron.

Hairnets or caps for BOH, beard guards where required, clean apron, no jewelry below the wrist except a plain band. Nails trimmed; nail polish only under intact gloves.

Cold-holding requires 41°F or below. Read the unit's thermometer and verify with a calibrated probe in a TCS item near the door (warmest spot). Twice-daily logging is the minimum defense in an inspection.

Target 0°F or below. Note any frost build-up on the evaporator coil — a sign the door has been left open or the defrost cycle is failing.

If the walk-in is above 41°F, identify how long it has been there. TCS items past 4 hours in the danger zone are discarded; under 4 hours, move to a working unit. Call refrigeration service and document the corrective action on the log.

Pull oldest use-by dates forward. Park raw proteins on the bottom shelf, ready-to-eat on top. Common gotcha: a delivery dropped onto an existing case without rotating the older case forward.

RTE/TCS items held cold get a 7-day discard date counting the prep day as day 1. Use day-dot stickers with prep date, use-by date, and initials. Sauces, stocks, and proteins are the common offenders.

Pull anything dated beyond 7 days for cold-held RTE, or beyond manufacturer date for unopened items. Log the waste in your inventory system (MarginEdge, R365) so it shows in food-cost variance, not unexplained shrink.

Six inches off the floor on shelving or pallets — never on the walk-in floor. Lids or plastic wrap on every container; uncovered stockpot in the walk-in is a recurring inspector-cited violation.

Red for raw beef, yellow for raw poultry, blue for seafood, green for produce, white for dairy/RTE. Confirm each station has its own tongs and that allergen-only tools are staged separately.

Poultry and stuffed proteins 165°F (15 sec), ground meat 155°F, whole-cut beef/pork/fish 145°F, eggs cooked-to-order 145°F. Calibrate the probe in ice slurry to 32°F before service.

The PCFP-certified manager on shift owns the allergen call. Cover dedicated fry oil for gluten-free, glove change between tickets, and the no-substitution items. Required certification in MA, IL, MI, NY, RI.

Tongs, deli tissue, single-use gloves, or utensils for garnish, salad, bread, sandwich assembly. Glove change between raw and RTE tasks; gloves are not a substitute for handwashing.

Chlorine 50–100 ppm, quat 200–400 ppm per manufacturer label, iodine 12.5–25 ppm. Use the matching test strip — quat strips do not read chlorine. Log the reading on the daily sanitation log.

Boards, prep tables, slicers, can openers between tasks and at minimum every 4 hours. Wash-rinse-sanitize-air-dry; skipping the rinse leaves detergent residue that neutralizes the sanitizer.

Faucets, soap dispensers, paper-towel dispensers, walk-in door handles, reach-in handles, line cooler handles. Restock soap and paper towel at every handwash station before service.

High-temp machines: 180°F final rinse at the manifold (160°F at the dish surface) — verify with a max-registering thermometer. Low-temp chemical machines: chlorine 50 ppm minimum at the rinse arm.

Check droppings, gnaw marks, grease trails near the dock, walk-in seal, dry storage corners, and behind line equipment. Pull bait stations and check the Integrated Pest Management log from your provider (Orkin, Ecolab, Terminix).

Call the provider for an unscheduled service visit and document the call. Active rodent or roach evidence is an inspector close-and-correct in most jurisdictions — get the service report on file before the next health visit.

Light visible under back door = mouse access. Damaged window screen on the prep area = fly access. Note any maintenance work order in the system and tag the deficiency.

Internal trash to the dumpster before the line goes hot, lids closed, dock area hosed if grease has dripped. Open dumpster lids draw rodents and flies overnight and are a high-frequency inspector finding.

Cooling logs, cold-holding logs, sanitizer log, allergen briefing — all initialed. Health-inspection prep is a daily cadence, not an event; missing entries are the easiest critical violation to avoid.