Front-of-House Shutdown Checklist

Use a fresh sanitizer bucket at the required ppm for your sanitizer (typically 200-400 ppm for quat, 50-100 ppm for chlorine). Test with a strip before starting — buckets diluted by service-night spills are a common health-inspection finding.

Sanitize menus, condiment holders, salt and pepper, and any QR-code stands. Pull any menus with food residue or torn corners and stage them for replacement before the next open.

Move chairs onto tables before mopping. Pay attention to high-traffic paths and under booths where crumbs collect — these are the spots inspectors check for pest evidence.

Roll silverware to par, refill water pitchers, restage host stand with current reservation sheets. Anything the morning shift would otherwise have to do before doors open belongs here.

Pour spouts get pulled, rinsed, and soaked overnight — fruit flies breed in the residue otherwise. Wipe down the well, juice rail, and ice bin gasket.

Check bottles against the bar par sheet. Anything below par gets noted for the morning bartender's pull from the liquor room — don't leave the next shift opening short on house wine or well vodka.

Send the shortage list before leaving so the beverage director can adjust tomorrow's distributor order before the cutoff. Note any 86'd cocktails on the board for the AM bartender.

Glance at the posted license on the way out. Expired licenses are an immediate-suspension finding for state ABC inspectors. If the expiration is within 30 days, flag the GM.

Hit door handles, stall latches, faucet handles, and the underside of toilet seats with sanitizer. These are the surfaces an inspector swabs.

Standing water or slow drains are an early indicator of a clogged line — flagging tonight beats a backup during lunch service tomorrow. Note any odors for the maintenance log.

Pull the open-checks report from Toast/Square/Aloha and walk every line. Open tabs at lockout get auto-voided in some POS setups — lost revenue and a tip-out reconciliation problem for the servers.

Compare each server's declared cash to the POS cash-due report. Variances above $5 get logged by employee — chronic shorts are how skim shows up before it becomes a real problem.

Two-person count when possible. Log the envelope number, total, and time in the deposit book — the audit trail matters if the bank reports a short.

Cover the raw bar, garde manger, and pastry stations with food-safe wrap. Any item that needs to come to temp for AM service goes into the walk-in on the correct shelf per FIFO.

Espresso machine, soda gun, music system, dining-room TVs, host-stand iPad. Leave walk-in, reach-in, ice machine, hood-vent overnight cycle, and security cameras on.

Walk-in must read 41°F or below; freezer 0°F or below. A second daily reading at close is the documentation that food was held safe overnight — gaps here are a serious finding if a foodborne-illness complaint comes in.

If the walk-in is reading above 41°F at close, do not leave without a call to the chef on call. Move TCS items to the backup reach-in if available, and start the 4-hour clock on anything that may have been out of temp.

Front, back, and patio gates. Verify the alarm panel shows armed before walking out — a false-fault on the panel that doesn't actually arm is the most common overnight break-in pattern.

Lights down, candles out, no smoldering anything. Glance behind the bar and under the host stand for tabs, phones, jackets, and credit cards left by guests.

Broken equipment, guest incidents, near-misses, comp patterns. Anything the GM should see before the AM pre-shift goes here so it doesn't get lost between shifts.