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

I'm Liam Jones, NEBOSH-qualified health and safety consultant, Level 3 Food Safety, and founder of Pilla. This is how I approach fridge temperature checks in a food business, based on close to twenty years in frontline operations and advising hundreds of businesses on compliance. You can email me directly; I read every email.

Fridge temperature checks are the food safety record that gets missed most often, and the one your EHO will look at first. I've reviewed monitoring systems in hundreds of kitchens, and the pattern is almost always the same: the fridge is working fine, the temperatures are safe, but nobody wrote it down. When the EHO opens the records folder and finds three weeks of blank sheets, it does not matter that the fridge was at 4°C the whole time. You can't prove it.

The check itself takes less than a minute. The hard part is making sure it actually happens twice a day, across every fridge, logged properly, with someone noticing when it doesn't. That's what this article covers. I'll walk you through what the law requires, what your EHO is looking for, how to set up the check as a recurring work activity in Pilla, and what good practice looks like when you're running it day to day.

Key Takeaways

  • What temperature should a fridge be? The legal maximum is 8°C under Regulation (EC) 852/2004, but your target should be 1 to 5°C. Fresh fish needs to be below 3°C
  • How often do you need to check? A minimum of twice per day, once per shift. You should also check after deliveries, power outages, and any time the door has been left open
  • How do you set it up in Pilla? Use the work template below, set it to run twice daily for each fridge unit. Most businesses check once at the start of service and once at the end. Each unit needs its own reading
  • How do you automate the follow-up? Set up Poppi to track completion and chase anyone who hasn't done their check

Article Content

Understanding What's Required of You

Fridge temperature monitoring is a legal requirement under Regulation (EC) 852/2004. The regulation requires food business operators to maintain the cold chain and keep records that demonstrate compliance. In practical terms, that means your fridges need to hold food below 8°C, and you need documented proof that you're checking them regularly.

The 8°C figure is the legal ceiling, but it's not your target. Your target should be 1 to 5°C. That gives you a buffer. If a fridge is sitting at 7°C, it's technically legal, but you're one warm delivery or one propped-open door away from a breach. I've seen kitchens lose a full fridge of stock because they were running at 6 to 7°C and didn't catch the drift upward until food was already above 8°C for hours.

Bacteria that cause food poisoning grow fastest between 8°C and 63°C. Below 5°C, most harmful bacteria grow very slowly or stop altogether. But some, like Listeria monocytogenes, can still multiply at fridge temperatures. That's why refrigeration slows the risk rather than removing it, and why monitoring matters even when the fridge feels cold to the touch.

Fresh fish is a separate concern. It needs to be stored below 3°C, ideally on ice or in a dedicated fish fridge. Fish spoils faster than other proteins, and some of the bacteria that affect it can grow at normal fridge temperatures. If your operation handles fresh fish, your EHO will check for this specifically.

Your EHO expects to see temperature records taken a minimum of twice per day, once per shift. They'll also want to see corrective actions recorded when something went wrong: what happened, what you did about it, and whether any food was discarded. Blank records, or records that show the same temperature at the same time every day for six months, raise questions. Real records have variation. They show the occasional high reading followed by a corrective action. That's what compliance looks like in practice.

You should also check after deliveries (opening the door repeatedly raises the temperature), after power outages, after maintenance, and during hot weather when fridges work harder. These aren't optional extras. They're the checks that catch problems between your routine twice-daily readings.

Setting It Up as a Work Activity

The fridge temperature check template in Pilla has a single repeating element: a number input for each fridge. You add one row per unit, label it with your fridge identifier (Fridge 1, Prep Fridge, Fish Fridge, whatever you use), and record the temperature reading against it.

Create a work activity that runs twice daily for each fridge unit and assign it to the team responsible for opening and closing. Most businesses check once at the start of service and once at the end. Tag it with "Food Safety Checks" so it groups with your other monitoring tasks and Poppi can track them as a set. Each unit needs its own reading, so if you have three fridges, each one should be recorded separately.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

Each fridge in your operation should have its own row, labelled clearly. "Fridge 1" and "Fridge 2" is fine if everyone knows which is which, but "Prep Fridge", "Walk-in", "Fish Fridge", and "Bar Fridge" is better. The label should match what's physically on the unit. When your EHO asks to see the records for your fish fridge, you should be able to pull them up without guessing which one "Fridge 3" was.

Readings should fall between 1 and 5°C on a normal day. I'd expect some variation, a fridge that reads exactly 3°C at the same time every single day for months is a red flag, not a sign of good practice. Real readings move around. A reading of 4.2°C in the morning and 3.8°C in the evening is normal. A reading of 6.5°C followed by a corrective action note is good monitoring. A reading above 8°C with no corrective action recorded is a problem.

Common mistakes I see:

Businesses label their fridges in Pilla but not on the actual units. When a new staff member fills in the check, they guess which fridge is which. The records end up inconsistent, and the EHO spots it straight away. Label the physical fridge with the same name you use in the template.

Only recording one check per day when the requirement is two. A single reading tells you the temperature at one moment. It doesn't tell you what happened during the lunch rush when the door was open for ten minutes. Twice daily is the minimum, and if you're running multiple services, once per shift is what your EHO expects.

Recording the built-in display reading instead of using a calibrated probe thermometer. The display shows air temperature at one point in the unit. It can be several degrees off the actual food temperature and won't tell you about warm spots. A probe between food packs in the middle of the fridge gives you the reading that matters.

Not recording corrective actions when a reading is high. A temperature of 7°C is a warning sign. Your records should show that you rechecked in an hour, investigated the cause, and took action. If the reading was above 8°C, you need to document what food was moved, whether anything was discarded, and what was done to fix the unit. Records that only show normal readings with no corrective actions suggest the checks aren't being done properly, or that high readings are being ignored.

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.