The importance of opening and closing checks in hospitality
In hospitality, the busiest services are where things can start to slip.
The kitchen is under pressure, deliveries are arriving, staff are rushing, customers are waiting and suddenly small food safety checks start getting missed. The problem is that many of the issues Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) find during inspections are not usually caused by one huge mistake. They are caused by lots of small things being overlooked consistently over time.
That is where opening and closing checks become incredibly important.
Why opening checks matter
An opening check is essentially the business asking itself one simple question before service begins:
“Are we actually ready to operate safely today?”
Without these checks, businesses (or an EHO!) discover problems halfway through service when it is far harder to deal with them.
Opening checks commonly include:
Cleaning and disinfecting food preparation surfaces and equipment
Fridge and freezer temperature checks
Ensuring probe thermometers are working and calibrated
Ensure probe wipes are available
Checking hand wash stations are stocked
Checking there is a supply of hot and cold water to sinks and hand wash stations
Ensuring cleaning chemicals and equipment are available
Checking food is stored and labelled correctly
Checking for out of date food
Looking for signs of pest activity
Confirming cleaning from the previous night was completed properly
These checks help identify issues before they become larger problems.
For example, spotting a fridge running at 12°C before service starts is very different from discovering it six hours later after potentially unsafe food has already been served.
One issue EHOs regularly find during inspections is out of date food. Businesses will often say, “it’s easy to miss something because we have so much stock in the chiller”. Realistically, if staff are checking for out of date food as part of both the opening and closing checks every single day, this should significantly reduce the chance of anything being missed.
Closing checks are just as important
At the end of a busy shift, most team members just want to go home.
But closing procedures matter. They help reset the business properly for the next day.
The businesses that struggle most during inspections are often the ones where half of the opening or closing checks have been skipped.
Closing checks commonly include:
Fridge and freezer temperature checks
Emptying waste bins
Disposing of out of date food
Making sure food items are correctly covered and labelled
Checking equipment and food preparation surfaces have been cleaned and disinfected properly
Ensuring no food has been left out
Without proper closing checks, problems compound quickly over time.
One missed cleaning task becomes a build-up of grease or potentially an invitation to pests. One missing label becomes unidentified food in the fridge. One missed date check becomes out of date food remaining in use. One missed temperature record becomes a pattern of poor monitoring.
How Labl.it can help
One reason opening and closing checks sometimes fail is because people see them as ‘just paperwork’ or ‘a chore’ rather than a system that keeps the kitchen running properly.
Paper records can get forgotten. Sheets can go missing. People can rush through them without really checking anything.
Labl.it already helps businesses improve consistency with food labelling while the upcoming TempLog® products aim to make temperature monitoring and record keeping far simpler and more reliable.
The easier a system is to use, the more likely people are to complete a task properly. And ultimately, that is what good food safety management is really about, building systems that work consistently and ensure food safety even during the busiest services.
