Delivery temperature checks for food businesses

Why the door is a control

Food business operators must use suppliers they can trust and keep procedures based on HACCP principles. The Food Standards Agency's managing food safety guidance tells businesses to check, on delivery, that chilled and frozen food is cold enough, that packaging is not damaged, and that the goods are what was ordered. If you do not think the food was handled safely, do not use it, and contact the supplier. That is the whole control in one sentence. The rest of this guide is how to make it real on a Tuesday morning when the driver is in a hurry.

Safer Food, Better Business expects the same habit inside the chilling and suppliers methods: reputable suppliers, food checked as it arrives, chilled and frozen food put away at once, and a note when something is wrong. A tick that says "delivery OK" with no product and no temperature is a weak version of that method. Our guide to SFBB explains where the diary fits. Temperatures after the food is stored are a different record; see what a fridge log needs to show.

What to check before you accept

Meet the delivery. Do not let high-risk food wait on the step while service runs. Check the lines that can make people ill first: chilled ready-to-eat food, raw meat and poultry, dairy, cooked meats, and anything frozen. Ambient tins and dry goods still need a look, but they do not need a probe.

• Identity. Supplier, product and quantity match the order. Substitutions are written down, especially if the ingredient changes an allergen.
• Dates. Use-by dates have not passed. Use-by is safety. Best-before is quality. Do not accept food to "use today" if the use-by was yesterday.
• Packaging. No blown packs, punctures, leaks, gnawed boxes or badly dented cans. Vacuum packs that have lost their seal are a reject. Outer boxes that are filthy stay out of the clean kitchen; decant and keep the original date and name.
• Separation. Raw meat is not dripping onto ready-to-eat food in the same crate. If it has, you cannot wipe the lettuce and call it checked.
• Temperature. Chilled food is cold enough. Frozen food is still frozen. The numbers are below.
• Pests and spoilage. No insects, droppings, off smells or slimy surfaces. The van, if you can see the food compartment, is not filthy or stacked so that raw food soaks the ready-to-eat trays.

You do not have to probe every yogurt in a large drop. Probe a sample of the high-risk lines, including anything that feels warmer than the rest or was nearest the door. "It felt cold" is not a temperature.

The temperatures to write into your method

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, cold food must be kept at 8°C or below. That is the legal maximum, not a comfortable target. The Food Standards Agency recommends setting fridges at 5°C or below so a warm van, an open door or a busy service still has a margin. Many caterers write the delivery rule to match: accept chilled high-risk food at 8°C or below, and treat anything warmer as a reject unless a competent person can show a different, written limit for that product. Do not invent a higher limit on the door.

Frozen food should arrive frozen hard. Commercial freezers run at about −18°C or colder. Soft product, a wet outer case, or large ice crystals inside the pack are signs it has thawed and been refrozen. Refrozen food is a reject even if a probe now reads cold, because you cannot see how long it spent warm. Put frozen food into the freezer as soon as you accept it. Put chilled food into the fridge the same way. The FSA's chilling guidance is the reference for those storage temperatures after the van has left.

Some products are stricter than the general 8°C rule. Minced meat and meat preparations from approved premises, and businesses that serve burgers less than thoroughly cooked under the FSA source-control method, have tighter incoming temperatures set by the supplier or the method. If that is you, write those limits on the delivery sheet. Everyone else should not copy them onto ordinary chicken and milk. Hot food from a central kitchen, if you receive it, needs its own line: usually 63°C or above on arrival, then straight into hot holding or rapid cooling. A sealed tray of soup at 50°C is not "fine because it is still warm".

How to take the temperature

Use a clean probe. Disinfect it before and after, and do not poke it through the packaging of food you still intend to sell. Between packs is the usual check for bagged or boxed chilled food. If you must pierce something, use a pack you will discard or cook immediately, and note that. An infrared gun reads a surface. It is a useful screen for "this pallet is obviously warm". It is not a substitute for the probe your safe method names, and it will lie on shiny packaging and on food that has only just been taken from a cold store. The ice-water and boiling-water checks for the probe itself are in the probe calibration guide. A probe that failed its check this week cannot be the instrument that accepts a delivery.

Write the number you saw. If the display says 9°C, the sheet says 9°C. Rounding a reject into an accept is the failure officers look for when they compare the van, the fridge and the log.

When to reject, and what to do with the food

Reject when the temperature is outside the limit in your safe method, when packaging is damaged, when dates have passed, when raw food has contaminated ready-to-eat food, or when the product smells, looks or feels spoiled. Tell the supplier then, not at the end of the week. Do not put rejected food into your fridge "to cool it down" or "until they collect it" mixed with food you will serve. If it must wait for collection, label it rejected, keep it apart, and make sure a cook cannot grab it at the rush.

A rejection is a corrective action: what was wrong, what you did immediately, and what you will do next. Next might be a credit, a different supplier for today's service, or taking the dish off the board. The format is in the corrective action guide, and a paper layout is the corrective action record. Accepting warm chicken because you are short for tonight's special is not a judgement call your method allows.

What to record

For a routine accept, a short line is enough if your safe method says you record every high-risk delivery: date and time, supplier, product, temperature, accept, and the name of the person who checked. For a reject, add the reason and what happened to the food. Invoices and a supplier list cover traceability (who you bought from, what, and when) if they match the delivery. They do not replace the temperature.

You do not need a paragraph for every bottle of oil. You do need a record for the chilled and frozen foods your method names. Keep the sheet where receiving happens, not in the office. The delivery temperature log is a printable version of those columns. Once the food is in your fridge, the fridge log takes over. A good delivery check does not excuse a fridge that is 10°C at opening.

If the tablet is flat, a dated paper line with the same facts is acceptable. Do not invent a digital timestamp later that pretends the check was earlier than it was.

What environmental health officers check

Officers rarely arrive in time to watch the van. They ask what you do when it comes, then they look for evidence that the answer is true. Useful signs:

• Staff who receive food can state the chilled and frozen limits without reading them for the first time.
• Recent high-risk deliveries have a temperature, a product and a name, not a column of ticks.
• A rejection exists somewhere in the last few months, or you can explain a quiet period honestly. A year of perfect accepts next to a casual "we sometimes send stuff back" is hard to believe.
• Rejected food is not in the fridge unmarked. Accepted food is not still on the floor.
• Raw and ready-to-eat foods were not unloaded into the same wet tray.
• You can name the supplier of the ham, the milk or the cooked rice you are using today.

They may probe food that "just arrived". If it is already warm in the fridge, the delivery check or the put-away step failed, whichever story the sheet tells. How that sits inside a full visit is in the EHO inspection checklist.

Worked example

A neighbourhood restaurant takes a wholesaler drop at 7:40am, before prep. The driver wants to leave it on the step. The receiver keeps the chilled and frozen crates at the door and checks them before anything enters the kitchen. Raw chicken, probed between packs, is 4°C, packaging intact, use-by in date. Accepted, into the raw fridge within ten minutes, on the bottom shelf. Frozen chips are hard and read −18°C. Accepted, straight into the freezer.

Bagged salad in the same drop is 9°C and the box is wet. The safe method says reject chilled high-risk food above 8°C. It is not put in the fridge to recover. The supplier is phoned from the door, the line is marked rejected, and the diary says "salad rejected 07:55, 9°C, supplier notified, not used, Priya". The lunch salad comes off the board until a cash-and-carry replacement is probed at 4°C and accepted on a new line. A box of frozen prawns in the same van is soft, with a wet case and clumps of ice inside the bag. Rejected as thawed and refrozen, even though a corner of the bag now reads cold. Thursday's 4-weekly review mentions both rejects and a note to stop the driver leaving crates unattended. That is a working delivery control, including the food they did not serve.

Common mistakes

• Signing the driver's sheet and checking temperature later, after the food has sat out.
• Writing "cold" or a tick instead of the reading.
• Using an infrared gun alone, or a probe that has not been checked.
• Accepting food above 8°C because the fridge "will bring it down".
• Rejecting in conversation and leaving no record of what happened to the stock.
• Storing rejected food unmarked next to food you will cook tonight.
• Probing every ambient tin and never probing the ready-to-eat ham.

Where this comes from

This guide follows the Food Standards Agency pages on managing food safety (supplier and delivery checks) and chilling food correctly (8°C as the legal maximum for cold food in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, a practical fridge setting of 5°C or below, and frozen storage around −18°C). The same habits are in the suppliers and chilling safe methods of Safer Food, Better Business for caterers. What officers look at more widely is covered in food safety inspections and enforcement. Scottish businesses should follow Food Standards Scotland and CookSafe where they use it. Write the limits you will actually enforce into your own safe method, and train the person who meets the van.

Related pages

Fridge temperature logsFreezer temperature logsFridge temperature log sheetEHO readiness quizBakeriesChilling module

Sources

Last reviewed 22 October 2026. These links are the pages this guide was checked against. They are not an endorsement of Localyn, and they do not make a kitchen compliant.

• Managing food safety (Food Standards Agency)
• Food hygiene for businesses: chilling and freezing
• Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013, Schedule 4 (temperature control)
• Safer Food, Better Business for caterers (Food Standards Agency pack)

Template, tool and hub

• Delivery temperature log
• Corrective action record
• Restaurants