Food Storage and Rotation Checklist

Probe TCS items as they come off the truck — cold proteins at 41°F or below, frozen at 0°F or below, hot-held at 135°F or above. Log the reading on the invoice or receiving sheet before signing. Sysco, US Foods, and PFG drivers will wait for the temp check; don't sign off on a load you haven't probed.

Cold TCS items above 41°F or frozen items showing soft-pack/refreeze evidence must be rejected at the door. A driver-signed credit on the spot is the cleanest paper trail; calling the rep after the truck leaves rarely recovers the cost.

Note the rejected items on the invoice, get the driver's signature, photograph the case and the probe reading, and email the rep before close of business. Attach the photos and signed invoice scan here.

Count every case before signing. Short cases get noted on the invoice with the driver present — a quantity dispute opened after the truck leaves almost never gets credited. Variance bleeds straight into food cost percentage.

Use a dissolvable date-label (DayMark or equivalent) on every TCS item with received date and use-by date. Open-date gets added at first use. Stage at the walk-in door so putaway can start within 15 minutes of receipt.

Cold-holding requires 41°F or below. Record the thermometer reading on the cooler log (twice daily minimum — opening and mid-shift). If the reading is above 41°F, escalate to the GM before loading product; a walk-in trending warm with TCS already loaded is a 4-hour-rule emergency.

Top-to-bottom order: RTE foods, seafood, whole beef/pork, ground meats, poultry. Poultry on the lowest shelf so no drip can land on anything else. Cross-contamination from drip is the #1 cited critical violation in health inspections.

Don't stack to the ceiling or block the evaporator fan. Hot product cooling in the walk-in needs uncovered, shallow pans with air space around them — covering a hot pan traps steam and slows cooling past the 2-hour 140°F-to-70°F threshold.

Walk every shelf with the date-label rule: anything past use-by goes in the waste log, not back into prep. Log the waste against the line item — this is what makes theoretical vs. actual food cost reconcilable.

Dry storage holds best between 50°F and 70°F with humidity under 60%. A summer dry-room running 85°F shortens shelf life on flour, rice, and oils — flag to the GM if the wall thermometer is consistently warm.

Six inches off the floor, two inches off walls — required by the FDA Food Code and routinely cited. Pallet, dunnage rack, or wire shelving only; no cases on the bare floor even temporarily.

Sanitizer, degreaser, and bleach live in a separate cabinet or section, never above or adjacent to food. Confirm every chemical has an original label or matching secondary-container label per OSHA HazCom.

New cases go behind existing stock so the oldest gets picked first. Pull out any bulging cans, rust, or pest-evidence (gnaw marks, droppings, webbing) and quarantine — pest evidence in dry storage is a license-level issue with most local health departments.

Freezer should hold at 0°F or below. A reading above 10°F suggests a door-gasket leak or compressor trouble — call service before product softens. Frozen proteins that have thawed and refrozen are unsafe to serve and unrecoverable.

Original boxes and bags are fine until opened. Any opened protein gets transferred to a labeled vacuum bag or a Cambro with a tight lid — freezer burn turns into yield loss the next time the line opens the case.

Freeze date plus contents on every bag and Cambro. Frozen proteins should rotate within 90 days for quality (shelf-stable longer, but quality degrades). Without a freeze date, the line cook can't tell a January chicken from a June chicken.

Ice buildup on the evaporator coils kills efficiency and drives the compressor hard. Weekly visual check; full defrost monthly or per the manufacturer's schedule. Pull product to a backup freezer or chest before starting.

Open-date + 7-day discard (or the manufacturer's spec, whichever is shorter) on every TCS container. Day-of-the-week color labels (DayMark, NCCO) let any line cook read the date at a glance without flipping the container.

Every restock is a rotation moment — pull older cases forward, slot the new delivery to the back. The FIFO discipline only works if every receiver does it every time; one shortcut and the back of the shelf goes out-of-date unseen.

Every discarded item gets logged with reason code: expired, spoiled, over-prep, dropped. The waste log feeds MarginEdge or R365 reconciliation and is the only way to spot whether a particular protein is consistently over-ordered.

Flag anything inside three days of use-by to the sous so it lands on tonight's special or family meal. This is the cheapest food-cost lever in the building — every $50 of would-be-waste turned into a special is $50 of margin recovered.