Guide
How to build a HACCP plan for a restaurant
HACCP — Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points — is the food-safety method most food authorities expect a restaurant to work from. The plan itself is short: you decide where food can become unsafe, set limits, check them, and keep the records. The hard part is doing the checks every single trading day. This guide walks the seven principles as they apply to a working kitchen, and shows which daily records usually carry the most weight.
The seven principles of HACCP
Conduct a hazard analysis
Walk your menu from delivery to service and list what could make a guest ill: biological (pathogens on raw chicken), chemical (sanitiser near prep surfaces) and physical (glass, bone, packaging). Write down each hazard and how likely it is in your kitchen.
In RestaurantOps: Recurring exceptions — repeated fridge failures or missed cleaning — show you where your real hazards concentrate.
Identify critical control points (CCPs)
A CCP is a step where control is essential: cooking, cooling, hot holding, cold storage, reheating. Most independent restaurants end up with a handful, not dozens.
In RestaurantOps: Each cold room, freezer, fridge and hot-holding unit becomes a monitored piece of equipment.
Establish critical limits
Give every CCP a measurable limit — for example chilled storage at or below the temperature required by your local food authority, or cooling within a defined time window. Use your national guidance for the exact figures; they differ by country.
In RestaurantOps: You set an acceptable range per unit, so a limit is attached to the equipment rather than to someone's memory.
Set monitoring procedures
Decide who checks what, how often, and with which thermometer. Monitoring that has no named owner and no time of day is the first thing to slip during a busy service.
In RestaurantOps: Temperature checks and cleaning tasks sit inside the opening and closing checklists with due times and the employee who signed off.
Define corrective actions
State in advance what happens when a limit is breached: discard the product, move stock to another unit, extend cooking, call an engineer. The action matters as much as the reading.
In RestaurantOps: An out-of-range reading is flagged and takes a corrective-action note, so the reading and the response stay together.
Verify that the plan works
Periodically review the plan itself: calibrate thermometers, check that records are actually being completed, and update the plan when the menu, equipment or supplier changes.
In RestaurantOps: Weekly reports show checklist completion, missed tasks, temperature exceptions and recurring issues in one view.
Keep records and documentation
Records are what an inspector can see. Keep your hazard analysis, limits, monitoring logs, corrective actions and verification notes, and be able to show who recorded what and when.
In RestaurantOps: Every entry keeps the employee and timestamp; corrections are audited rather than overwritten, and finalised records are not silently deleted.
The records a restaurant actually has to keep
Exact frequencies and temperature limits come from your local food authority. The shape of the paperwork is broadly the same everywhere.
| Record | Typical frequency | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Cold storage temperatures | Per unit, at least daily | Temperature logs with acceptable ranges |
| Cooking / hot holding checks | Per service | Checklist tasks with due times |
| Opening and closing checks | Every trading day | Opening & closing checklists |
| Cleaning schedule | Daily, weekly, monthly | Cleaning module with verification |
| Corrective actions | Whenever a limit is breached | Corrective-action notes on flagged readings |
| Waste and disposal | As it happens | Waste entries with reason codes |
| Shift communication | Each shift change | Manager handover with unresolved items |
Writing your plan in an afternoon
- 1. List your processes. Group the menu by how it is handled: served cold, cooked and served, cooked and cooled, reheated.
- 2. Mark the control points. For each group, note the steps where temperature or time is what keeps food safe.
- 3. Write the limits down. One line per control point, with the figure from your national guidance.
- 4. Assign the checks. Put each check on the opening or closing routine with a due time and a role.
- 5. Decide the corrective action. Write what to do before it happens, not during service.
- 6. Review it monthly. New dish, new fridge, new supplier — revisit the plan.
Keep the daily records without the clipboard
RestaurantOps turns your opening and closing routine, temperature checks, cleaning schedule, waste log and manager handover into a few taps on a phone — with the employee and timestamp captured on every entry, and out-of-range readings flagged for a corrective-action note.
Set up your venueThis guide is general information, not legal or food-safety advice, and the figures required for your critical limits come from your local food authority. RestaurantOps helps you record what your team did and flags readings outside the ranges you set; it does not guarantee regulatory or HACCP compliance — your plan, records and procedures remain your responsibility.