Free checklist
Dishwasher Training Checklist
The checklist (11 items)
Written as observable actions, so two trainers scoring the same shift land in the same place. In CrewSharp this is the Dish checklist in the Restaurant / QSR starter set, filed under Back of House, and every item here is editable.
- 1Scraped dishes before washing them
- 2Set up the sinks to wash, rinse, then sanitize
- 3Checked sanitizer strength with a test stripCritical
- 4Checked the dish machine temperature at the start of the shift
- 5Kept clean and dirty wares apartCritical
- 6Let dishes air dry before stacking them
- 7Changed the sink water when it got dirty or cool
- 8Put clean wares away in their marked spots
- 9Sent clean pans back to the line before it ran short
- 10Kept the dish area floor dry
- 11Emptied the dish area trash before it overflowed
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What usually goes wrong
Sanitizer strength is the critical item, and it is invisible. A dish that looks clean can still carry what the sanitizer was meant to kill, so the test strip is the only honest check.
The items a good total should not outweigh
- Checked sanitizer strength with a test strip
- Kept clean and dirty wares apart
When to sign someone off
A workable bar for this checklist: no critical items missed, a score above a line you set for Dish specifically rather than one number for the whole building, and observed on more than one shift with at least one of them busy. Then date it, so it can expire.
That last part is the one people skip. A sign-off with no date cannot be re-checked, which means a year later you have a record that says somebody was ready once.
Checklists that pair with this one
Someone trained on this one most often covers these alongside it, which makes them the sensible second checklist to train.
Common questions
Is dish a good place to start a new kitchen hire?
Often, yes. It teaches the kitchen layout and the food safety basics without the pressure of the screen, and a person who learns sanitizer discipline at dish carries it to every position after.
What should be on a dishwasher checklist?
The 11 items above cover it: scraped dishes before washing them, set up the sinks to wash, rinse, then sanitize, checked sanitizer strength with a test strip, and the rest of the list. Keep it in that range. Fewer and a pass proves very little; many more and trainers stop finishing it during a real shift.
Which items should count as critical?
On this checklist, 2 items are marked critical: checked sanitizer strength with a test strip; kept clean and dirty wares apart. Missing one means not ready, regardless of the total score, because these are the failures that cannot be corrected after the fact.
Scoring it is the part that lasts
Run this Dish checklist on a tablet between rushes and CrewSharp keeps the rest: who is signed off, when it was last checked, and which item your crew misses most.
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