Opening and closing food safety checks: a daily routine for the person in charge

Most kitchens only find out what is wrong when the environmental health practitioner walks in, and then everyone scrambles. A restaurant opening and closing food safety checklist turns your duties as the person in charge into two short walks a day, so that you find the problems first. It takes about ten minutes at each end of the day once the team is used to it.

Why a restaurant opening and closing food safety checklist beats a pre-inspection scramble

Under R638, the Regulations Governing General Hygiene Requirements for Food Premises, the Transport of Food and Related Matters, the person in charge of food premises carries real responsibility. That includes making sure food handlers are trained in food hygiene and having suitable training yourself. Your Certificate of Acceptability from the local authority says the premises met the requirements when it was issued. It does not say they still do today.

Inspections are not booked months ahead, and a complaint can bring an inspector on any day. The only reliable way to be ready is to check the basics every day. A routine also protects you: when something goes wrong, a signed daily record shows that you were managing the premises, not hoping for the best. Our R638 guide and Certificate of Acceptability guide explain the wider legal picture.

The opening walk: people, basins, fridges and pests

Do the opening walk before food preparation starts. Follow the same route every day so nothing gets skipped.

People

• Ask each food handler whether they are well. Anyone with diarrhoea, vomiting, jaundice, a fever with a sore throat, or an infected cut or skin condition must not handle food until cleared.
• Check clean uniforms, hair covered, no jewellery apart from what your policy allows, and cuts covered with a blue waterproof plaster.
• Confirm you have enough trained people on shift for the bookings.

Hand wash basins

• Soap, paper towels and hot and cold running water at every basin.
• Basins clear and used only for washing hands, not for rinsing cloths or storing utensils.
• Sanitiser made up at the correct strength, checked with test strips if your product uses them.

Fridges and freezers

• Read and record each unit’s temperature against the limit on your log.
• Food covered, labelled with what it is and the date it was made or opened.
• Nothing past its use-by date or your own discard date.
• Raw meat, poultry and fish below ready-to-eat food. Door seals intact and doors closing properly.

Overnight cleaning and pests

• Surfaces, slicers, mixers and floors clean, and last night’s cleaning signed off.
• No droppings, cockroaches or flies. Check behind equipment and in the dry store.
• Doors, fly screens and drain covers in place.

Deliveries due

Know what is arriving today, who will receive it and where it will go. If the walk-in is already full, sort it out before the chicken arrives, not while the driver waits.

During service: the three checks that cannot wait

Once the doors are open, most checks can be done by the team on their own logs. Three need the person in charge’s eye every service.

1. Cooking and reheating. Spot check core temperatures with a clean probe against the temperatures in your procedures, especially for chicken, minced meat and reheated dishes.
2. Hot and cold holding. Check bain-maries, display fridges and buffet units. Food that has dropped out of its holding temperature needs a decision now, not at the end of the shift.
3. Hand washing and cross-contamination. Watch whether staff wash hands after handling raw meat, after breaks and after touching their phones, and whether raw and ready-to-eat food stays on separate boards and surfaces.

If your menu carries allergen information, add a fourth: when a customer declares an allergy, check that the order is flagged and that the kitchen knows.

The closing walk: food, cleaning, refuse and security

Food

• Everything that is being kept is covered, labelled and dated.
• Cooked food for the next day is cooled quickly in shallow containers before going into the fridge, not left on the stove to cool overnight.
• Food that has been in hot holding or on display is discarded or handled according to your written policy.
• Anything past its date goes out tonight.

Cleaning

• Surfaces, equipment and floors cleaned to the schedule and signed off by the person who did them.
• Cloths, mops and buckets cleaned and left to dry.
• Chemicals stored away from food, in labelled containers.

Refuse

• Kitchen bins emptied, washed if needed and relined.
• Refuse area clean with lids closed, so that it does not feed pests overnight.

Equipment and security

• Ovens, fryers and gas off. Fridges and freezers on, with doors closed.
• Outside doors and windows closed and locked, with no gaps for rodents.

What to do when a check fails

A check that finds nothing wrong for months on end is either a very good kitchen or a checklist that is being ticked without looking. When something fails, do three things: correct it now, record what you did, and ask why it happened.

Failed check	Immediate action	Follow-up
Fridge reading above its limit	Probe the food inside, move it to a working unit, and decide on each item according to your procedure	Call the technician, check the door seal, record the outcome
No soap or towels at a basin	Refill before anyone starts work	Assign the refill to a named person on each shift
Droppings in the dry store	Remove and discard affected food, clean and sanitise the area	Call your pest control contractor and record the visit
Food handler reports vomiting	Send them home, clean the areas they worked in	Agree when they may return under your policy
Cleaning not signed off	Check the area and clean before use	Talk to the closing team and adjust the schedule if it is unrealistic

A scenario from a takeaway

The manager of a takeaway in Soweto started the opening walk after a poor inspection. In the first week she found the chip freezer running warm twice and the basin by the fryers without soap on three mornings. The freezer needed a new door seal. The soap problem was simpler: nobody owned it. She added “refill basins” to the closing checklist with a name next to it, and the problem stopped. At the next inspection she could show a month of records and the repair invoice.

Keeping the record short enough that it gets done

The best checklist is the one that is completed every day. Keep it to one page per day, with ticks and initials for the routine items and space to write only the exceptions. Put the temperature readings on the same sheet if you can, so there is one record instead of four.

• Use the same order on paper as the route you walk.
• Write the limits on the sheet next to each check.
• Review the week’s sheets every Monday and sign them.
• File them where you can find them quickly when an inspector asks.

If you want ready-made forms, the basic food safety document templates toolkit includes the everyday records a small food business needs.

What to do this week

• Walk your kitchen with this list and write down your own route.
• Put a one-page opening and closing sheet on the wall by the office door.
• Name who does each closing task on each shift.
• Check that every fridge and freezer has its limit written on the log.
• Book your own training if you have never had it as person in charge.

Our Food Safety Practices for Persons in Charge of Food Premises course covers your R638 duties in practical terms. It is SAATCA registered (ASC provider No. 065) and HPCSA CPD accredited. For an independent check of your premises before the inspector comes, see our food hygiene audits.