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

Understanding What's Required of You

Regulation (EC) 852/2004 requires food business operators to ensure that food received is safe, and that you can trace it back to the supplier who sent it. The regulation doesn't prescribe a specific checklist, but it does require you to have procedures in place for incoming goods, and to maintain records that demonstrate compliance.

In practice, that means checking three things on every delivery: packaging condition, temperature of anything chilled or frozen, and date codes. If any of those fail, you reject the item or the whole delivery, and you document why. Your EHO will expect to see those records. They'll also want to see evidence that you have an approved supplier list and that you've acted on problems, not just noted them.

The moment you sign for a delivery, you take legal responsibility for that food. If a customer gets ill from contaminated chicken that was already warm when it arrived, the fact that your supplier caused the problem won't protect you if you didn't check the temperature on receipt. Your due diligence defence depends on being able to show that you had a system, you followed it, and you rejected food that didn't meet your standards.

Temperature limits on arrival are straightforward. Chilled food should be below 8°C, ideally below 5°C. Frozen food should be at -18°C or below, though -15°C on arrival is generally accepted because of the temperature lift during transit. Fresh fish is its own category: below 3°C, ideally on ice. These aren't guidelines. They're the standards your EHO will measure against.

One thing I've learned to watch for: the gap between what the vehicle thermometer shows and what the food actually reads. A vehicle might display 3°C, but the product in the back corner that sat closest to the door has been at 9°C since the third drop on the driver's round. The vehicle reading tells you about the air. A probe tells you about the food. Those are different numbers, and only one of them matters.

Setting It Up as a Work Activity

I've built a food delivery check template in Pilla covering supplier details, a delivery inspection checklist, temperature recording, date code review, acceptance or rejection, and notes for any issues found. It gives you a structured record for each delivery that comes through the door.

Create this as a work activity each time a delivery arrives, or if your deliveries come on a predictable schedule, set it up as a recurring activity on the relevant days. Assign it to whoever's responsible for receiving goods. Tag it with "Food Safety Checks" so it groups with your other monitoring tasks and Poppi can track completion. If you have multiple delivery days or multiple suppliers, create separate instances so each one gets its own record.

The template is designed to be completed at the point of delivery, while the vehicle is still there and the driver's still on site. If a check reveals a rejection, you need the driver present to take the goods back. Completing it from memory after the van leaves defeats the purpose.

1. Supplier and delivery details

Record the supplier name, delivery date, and what was delivered. This is the traceability foundation. If there's a food safety incident three weeks from now, this record is how you trace a product back to who supplied it and when.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

The supplier name should match your approved supplier list exactly. "ABC Meats" every time, not "ABC" one week and "the meat guy" the next. Include enough detail about what was delivered to be useful during a recall: "Fresh chicken portions (10kg), minced beef (5kg)" is traceable. "Meat delivery" isn't.

Common mistakes I see:

Not recording the delivery at all when it's a small top-up order. Every delivery needs a record, whether it's a full weekly order or a single case of milk from a cash-and-carry run. The small, unrecorded deliveries are the ones that cause problems because they sit outside your normal system.

2. Delivery inspection

This covers the physical condition of what's arrived. Each item addresses a specific risk: packaging intact and undamaged, no signs of contamination or pest damage, labels present and legible, seals and vacuum packs intact, no dented or bulging cans.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

The packaging check isn't just about whether the box looks alright from the outside. Open it. Check the product packaging underneath. I've seen deliveries where the outer cardboard was pristine but the vacuum-sealed packs inside had been punctured by a pallet nail. The driver stacked the delivery neatly, the outer case looked fine, and the problem didn't surface until someone went to use the product two days later.

Vacuum packs should be tight with no air pockets. Modified atmosphere packaging should be inflated, not flat. Cans need checking at the seams, not just the face. A dent in the body of a can is cosmetic. A dent at the seam is a potential Clostridium botulinum risk, and that's a rejection every time.

Common mistakes I see:

Ticking "packaging acceptable" as a blanket assessment without inspecting individual items. If you received twelve cases and only checked two of them, your record suggests you checked all twelve. Be honest about what you actually inspected. Spot checks are legitimate, but record them as such.

3. Temperature check

Record the probe temperature of chilled and frozen items on arrival. This is the check your EHO cares about most, because temperature abuse during transport is the most common way harmful bacteria multiply before food even reaches your kitchen.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

Actual probe readings, not the figure off the vehicle thermometer printout and not an estimate. Use a calibrated probe between packs for chilled goods. For frozen items, check for signs of thawing (misshapen packaging, ice crystals on the surface, frost patterns that suggest a refreeze) and record the probe reading if you can get one. Some frozen items are too solid to probe on arrival, in which case a between-pack reading and a visual inspection for thaw evidence is the best you can do.

Chilled food should read below 8°C. If it's at 6 or 7°C, that's within limits but worth noting, especially in summer when vehicles work harder and rounds take longer. If it's above 8°C, that's a decision point: reject, or use immediately depending on severity. Above 15°C for chilled protein is a straight rejection. No discussion.

Common mistakes I see:

Accepting chilled food at 10 or 11°C because the kitchen needs the stock and the next delivery isn't until Thursday. I understand the pressure, but that food has been in the danger zone for an unknown period. You can't cook out every risk, particularly with toxin-producing organisms like Staphylococcus aureus where the toxin survives cooking even if the bacteria don't.

Recording the vehicle thermometer reading as if it were a product temperature. The vehicle might show 2°C. The chicken in the back of the van, loaded four hours ago and now two stops deep into a round, could be at 8°C. Probe the food. That's the reading that counts.

4. Date codes

Check use-by dates and best-before dates on all products received. Record whether the dates give you adequate time to use the items before they expire.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

Use-by dates are safety dates. Food must not be used after a use-by date, and accepting a delivery with a use-by date that's tomorrow means you need to use it today or bin it. That's not acceptable unless you planned for it. Best-before dates are quality dates and less critical from a food safety perspective, but still worth recording.

The question to ask isn't just "is this in date?" but "does this date give us enough time?" If your supplier consistently sends products with two days left on the use-by, that's a supplier management conversation you need to have, and your delivery records are the evidence for that conversation.

Common mistakes I see:

Checking the first product in the case but not the ones underneath. Suppliers sometimes stack older stock at the bottom and newer stock on top. Check a few items from different positions in the delivery. Also, confusing use-by with best-before. They're different things with different legal consequences. Food past its use-by date is a criminal offence to sell. Food past its best-before date is a quality issue.

5. Accept or reject

Based on your inspection, record whether you're accepting or rejecting the delivery. If rejecting, record what was rejected and why.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

A clear decision. Accepted, or rejected with a reason. If you're rejecting individual items rather than the whole delivery, list specifically what was sent back. "Rejected 2x cases chicken portions, probe temp 11°C on arrival" gives you a record you can use when speaking to the supplier and demonstrates due diligence to your EHO.

A delivery record that shows 100% acceptance rate across six months of daily deliveries is suspicious. Real operations reject things. Packaging gets damaged in transit. Temperatures drift on hot days. Use-by dates arrive too short. If your records never show a rejection, it raises the question of whether the checks are actually being done or whether problems are being accepted because it's easier.

Common mistakes I see:

Rejecting verbally but not recording it. The driver takes the goods back, you get a credit note eventually, but your food safety records don't show the rejection. That means your traceability system has a gap. When the EHO asks to see your rejection records, you've got nothing to show, even though you were doing the right thing at the time.

6. Notes

Record any issues, observations, or follow-up actions. This is where the context lives.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

For a clean delivery: a brief note is fine. "All items received, temperatures within range, dates acceptable" covers it. For problems: record the issue, the action you took, and any follow-up needed. "Vehicle arrived 45 minutes late, chilled items at 6.8°C, accepted but noted. Contacted supplier re delivery schedule" tells the story. If you're seeing recurring issues with a particular supplier, your notes over time build the case for either a formal complaint or a change of supplier.

Common mistakes I see:

Recording the problem but not the action. "Chicken at 9°C" without saying whether you rejected it, used it immediately, or accepted it anyway tells me nothing useful. Every noted issue needs a corresponding action, even if the action is "accepted on this occasion, supplier contacted."

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, flag missed delivery checks, and notify managers when rejections occur so supplier issues get addressed promptly.