Free checklist
Hot Food Case 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 Hot Food Case checklist in the Grocery / Convenience starter set, filed under Departments, and every item here is editable.
- 1Cooked each item to its required internal temperatureCritical
- 2Probed and logged hot holding temperatures on scheduleCritical
- 3Pulled food past its hold time
- 4Labelled every pan with its time out
- 5Used a clean utensil for each item
- 6Kept allergen signs next to the right itemsCritical
- 7Restocked pans before they ran empty
- 8Packed orders into the correct container size
- 9Priced packed orders correctly
- 10Wiped the case edges and sneeze guard
- 11Cooled leftovers through the cooling steps or threw them out
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What usually goes wrong
Logging holding temperatures is critical and it is the one that gets filled in from memory. A log written at the end of the shift protects nobody, so a trainer should watch a probe go into the food at least once before signing.
The items a good total should not outweigh
- Cooked each item to its required internal temperature
- Probed and logged hot holding temperatures on schedule
- Kept allergen signs next to the right items
When to sign someone off
A workable bar for this checklist: no critical items missed, a score above a line you set for Hot Food Case 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
How often should hot holding temperatures be checked?
At the interval your local health code sets, and at least every two hours. The schedule matters less than the habit of probing the food itself, because a case that reads hot on its dial can still have a cold pan in the corner.
What should be on a hot food case checklist?
The 11 items above cover it: cooked each item to its required internal temperature, probed and logged hot holding temperatures on schedule, pulled food past its hold time, 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, 3 items are marked critical: cooked each item to its required internal temperature; probed and logged hot holding temperatures on schedule; kept allergen signs next to the right items. 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 Hot Food Case 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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