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Free food safety checklist for cafes, delis & bakeries

A printable daily food-safety checklist covering opening, closing and cleaning checks, plus your fridge and freezer temperatures — with the safe limits already filled in for your area. Print it for the wall, or run the same checks on your team's phones with ProCafe.

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Putting this into practice in Ireland

Build the working day around your Irish food-safety system. FSAI's Safe Catering pack separates delivery, refrigeration, cooking and cooling, hot display, hygiene and staff records. Choose the activities your cafe actually carries out, then keep the observations and decisions together for your environmental health officer.

FSAI: Safe Catering pack
  1. Use the Safe Catering record areas as a review list: deliveries, refrigeration, cooking/cooling/reheating, hot display and hygiene. Configure only the checks relevant to your menu and service.
  2. At closing, review missed checks and corrective actions with the next shift. Keep the observation, affected food and decision together, so an HSE visit can follow what happened rather than just see completed boxes.

ProCafe · Free template

Daily food safety checklist

Site: Date: Checked by:

Opening checks

  • Fridges and freezers running correctly
  • Probe thermometer working and sanitised
  • Hand wash basin stocked with soap and paper towels
  • Allergen information available and up to date
  • Fridge temperature(≤ 5 °C)

Fridge & freezer temperatures

  • Fridge temperature(≤ 5 °C)
  • Freezer temperature(≤ -18 °C)

Cleaning

  • Area cleaned and sanitised
  • Product used
  • Contact time followed

Closing checks

  • Hot holding switched off and food cooled correctly
  • Surfaces and equipment cleaned and sanitised
  • Waste removed and bins cleaned
  • Fridges and freezers running correctly

Tick each check once done, and record temperatures where shown. Keep the completed sheet on file.

Questions

Common questions

What should be on a daily food safety checklist for a cafe?
At a minimum: opening checks that everything is working and stocked, fridge and freezer temperatures, safe cooking/cooling/reheating where you handle hot food, cleaning, and closing checks. This template covers the daily opening, temperature, cleaning and closing checks a small cafe, deli or bakery needs.
Is this food safety checklist suitable for my country's rules?
The checks here are the everyday good-practice checks common to most food-safety schemes, and the temperature limits shown are set for your area. Your local authority's guidance always has the final say — this is a starting point you can adapt, not a substitute for it.
Is the checklist free?
Yes — print it and use it every day at no cost. If paper checklists keep going missing, ProCafe runs the same checks on your team's phones, records who did them and when, and keeps everything ready for an inspection. Free for 14 days, no card required.
How do I prove to an inspector that the checks were done?
With paper you keep the signed sheets on file. ProCafe keeps a time-stamped, tamper-evident history automatically and lets you export it as a PDF or spreadsheet — so when an inspector asks, the proof is a couple of taps away.

Keep going

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