How I Set Up the Food Cooling Temperature Check Template with Customers in Pilla

Understanding What's Required of You

When cooked food cools, it passes through the danger zone between 63°C and 8°C. Bacteria multiply rapidly in this range, some doubling every 20 minutes. Spores that survived cooking germinate as the temperature drops, and certain bacteria like Clostridium perfringens produce toxins during this growth phase that reheating won't destroy. A casserole that sat at room temperature for three hours can make people ill even if you reheat it to 75°C the next day.

The legal basis is Regulation (EC) 852/2004, which requires food business operators to protect food from contamination at all stages, including cooling, and to maintain records that show due diligence. UK guidance gives you a specific target: cool food from above 63°C to below 8°C within 90 minutes. An alternative two-stage method, more common in US guidance, breaks it into 63°C to 21°C within 2 hours, then 21°C to 5°C within 4 hours, for a 6-hour maximum. Both are valid. Pick the one that fits your operation and stick to it.

Your EHO expects to see documented cooling records with start temperatures, end temperatures, the method used, and the time taken. They're looking for evidence that you understand the risk and have a system in place. I did my Level 3 Food Safety qualification years ago, and the message was clear: cooling is one of the critical control points most kitchens get wrong, not because they don't own a blast chiller, but because nobody writes anything down.

I've walked into sites where the head chef could explain the 90-minute rule perfectly but had zero records to prove they followed it. The EHO's position is the same as it is with every other check: if it's not recorded, it didn't happen. And when the outbreak investigation starts, "we always cool things properly" is not a defence.

Rice and pasta carry an additional risk. Bacillus cereus spores survive cooking and germinate as the food cools, producing toxins that cause vomiting and diarrhoea. These toxins aren't destroyed by reheating. Rice should be cooled within 1 hour and used within 24 hours. If your kitchen cools rice or pasta regularly, your EHO will check for this specifically.

Setting It Up as a Work Activity

I've built a food cooling temperature check template in Pilla covering the food item, cooling method, start and end temperatures, the result, and a notes field for recording problems and corrective actions. It captures what your EHO needs to see for each cooling event.

In Pilla, create a new work activity using this template that runs four times throughout each day and tag it with "Food Safety Checks". Record the start time, temperature at the start of cooling, and the temperature when food reaches 5°c or below. Use the same tag across all your food safety checks so they're grouped together and Poppi can track them as a set.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

Every cooling event should have its own record. The food item field should be specific: "Beef casserole, 12 litres" tells me more than "casserole". The cooling method should describe what was actually done, not just "fridge". Did you use a blast chiller? An ice bath then transfer to the fridge? Shallow containers spread across the prep bench? The method matters because if the cooling time was borderline, I need to know whether your method was appropriate for the volume and type of food.

Start temperature should be above 63°C. If it's below that, either the food wasn't cooked properly or you didn't check soon enough after cooking. End temperature should be below 8°C, ideally below 5°C. The time between those two readings should be 90 minutes or less. If you're using the two-stage method, your records should show the intermediate reading at the 2-hour mark as well.

The result field is where you commit to a pass or fail. If the food reached below 8°C within 90 minutes using an appropriate method, that's a pass. Anything else needs a corrective action recorded in the notes: what went wrong, what you did about it, and whether any food was discarded.

Common mistakes I see:

Recording the cooling check hours after it happened, often at the end of the shift. By then, the start temperature is a guess and the time taken is reconstructed from memory. The check loses all value. Record the start temperature the moment cooking finishes, and the end temperature the moment cooling is complete.

Using "fridge" as the cooling method for large volumes. A standard fridge is not designed to cool 20 litres of hot soup. It raises the fridge temperature, puts other stored food at risk, and cools the hot food far too slowly. Blast chillers, ice baths, or dividing into shallow containers (no more than 50mm deep) are what the situation requires. If you don't have a blast chiller, your cooling method needs to compensate.

Not recording corrective actions when cooling takes too long. A reading that shows food was above 8°C for more than 90 minutes without any follow-up note is worse than no record at all. It's evidence you knew there was a problem and didn't act. Your records should show what you did: divided into smaller portions, moved to a blast chiller, discarded the food. The decision and the reasoning need to be on paper.

Skipping the check for rice and pasta because "it's only a small amount". Volume doesn't change the Bacillus cereus risk. A single portion of rice left cooling at room temperature for two hours can produce enough toxin to cause illness. Cool rice within 1 hour, refrigerate it, and record it the same way you would any other cooling event.

Automate the Follow-Up with Poppi

We're still finalising the best automation setup for food safety checks. Once that's ready, this section will show you how to use Poppi to track completion and chase anyone who hasn't done their check.