Daily Food Safety Checklist for Restaurants and Cafes in NZ

Running a restaurant or cafe means dealing with food safety every day. Your Food Control Plan sets out what you need to do. This checklist breaks it down into a practical daily routine that covers everything your verifier expects to see in your records.

Opening Checks

These should be done before you start handling food for the day.

Fridge and Freezer Temperatures

• Check every fridge and freezer in your operation
• Record the actual temperature reading (not just “OK”)
• Fridges must be at 5°C or below
• Freezers must be at -18°C or below
• If any unit is outside range, take corrective action immediately: check the door seal, check if it’s been overloaded, assess food inside using the 2-hour/4-hour rule

Food Condition Check

• Check that stored food is covered, labelled, and dated
• Raw food is stored below cooked food (no exceptions)
• Check use-by dates and remove anything expired
• Check for any signs of pest activity in storage areas

Staff Hygiene

• All staff have clean uniforms or aprons
• Hair is tied back and/or covered
• No jewellery on hands or wrists (except plain wedding bands if your FCP allows it)
• All staff wash hands before starting work
• Any staff who are unwell (vomiting, diarrhoea, infected cuts) must not handle food. Send them home or assign non-food duties

Facility Check

• Handwashing stations are stocked with soap and paper towels
• Sanitiser is available and at the correct concentration
• Food preparation surfaces are clean
• Rubbish bins are empty or have capacity for the day

During Service

Cooking Temperatures

• Probe food at the thickest point before serving
• Poultry: 75°C for at least 30 seconds
• Minced meat and sausages: 75°C
• Reheated food: must reach 75°C
• Record any temperature checks your FCP requires

Hot-Holding

• Food on bain-maries, pie warmers, or soup stations must stay above 60°C
• Check at least once during service, not just at the start
• If food drops below 60°C, apply the 2-hour/4-hour rule

Cooling

• If you’re cooling cooked food for later use, it must go from 60°C to 21°C within 2 hours, then from 21°C to 5°C within a further 4 hours
• Use shallow containers, ice baths, or blast chillers to speed up cooling
• Record the time you started cooling and check temperatures at intervals

Cross-Contamination Prevention

• Use separate chopping boards and utensils for raw and cooked food
• Never store raw meat above ready-to-eat food
• Clean and sanitise surfaces between tasks (especially after handling raw meat)
• Manage allergens by using separate equipment for allergen-free preparation if needed

Deliveries

• Check temperature of chilled deliveries on arrival (must be 5°C or below)
• Check condition of packaging and reject anything damaged, open, or contaminated
• Check use-by dates and reject anything expired or too close to expiry
• Record delivery checks including supplier name, date, and any issues found
• Store deliveries immediately; don’t leave chilled food sitting out

Closing Checks

Cleaning and Sanitising

• Clean all food preparation surfaces, equipment, and utensils
• Clean floors, walls (where splashed), and sinks
• Empty and clean grease traps if applicable
• Sanitise after cleaning. Cleaning removes dirt, sanitising kills bacteria. You need both.
• Record that cleaning has been completed

End-of-Day Temperature Check

• Check all fridges and freezers again
• Record actual readings
• Make sure nothing has been left out that should be refrigerated

Food Storage

• All food is covered, labelled, and dated
• Leftovers are stored properly. If you’re keeping them, they must have been cooled correctly
• Discard anything that’s been in the danger zone too long

Waste

• Rubbish bins emptied
• External bins secured (to prevent pest access)
• Recycling sorted if applicable

Weekly Checks

Not everything needs to happen daily. These are typically weekly or as specified in your FCP:

• Deep clean of equipment (ovens, grills, extraction hoods, behind fridges)
• Calibrate thermometers using the ice point test (should read 0°C in ice water)
• Check pest control: look for droppings, gnaw marks, or other signs
• Review stock: rotate stock (first in, first out), discard anything expired
• Check cleaning chemicals: make sure you have enough stock and concentrations are correct

Monthly/Periodic Checks

• Staff training review: are all staff up to date on food safety training? Record any refresher training.
• Supplier review: are all supplier records current? Any issues with recent deliveries?
• FCP review: has anything changed in your operation that needs to be reflected in your plan? New equipment, new menu items, new suppliers?
• Mock recall: MPI recommends at least one per year. Can you trace a product from supplier to customer? See our mock recall guide.

Recording Everything

The checklist above tells you what to do. But from a compliance perspective, the records matter just as much as the actions. Your verifier will check:

• Consistency: are checks recorded every day with no gaps?
• Detail: actual temperature readings, not just ticks
• Corrective actions: when something was out of range, what did you do?
• Timeliness: records completed at the time, not backdated

The most common problem with paper-based checklists is that they don’t get filled in consistently. They get lost, they get wet, handwriting is illegible, and when it’s busy nobody wants to stop and write things down. Then the week before a verification visit, someone tries to fill in two months of records from memory.

If keeping up with this checklist on paper feels like a second job, the Template FCP App turns it into a guided digital workflow on your team’s phones. Each check is timestamped automatically and stored where it can’t get lost. When a temperature is out of range, the platform prompts for a corrective action on the spot, so no separate form is needed.

Try it free for 30 days and see if it sticks. Need something more than a template FCP? See our full range of software and services.