How I Use the Raw Egg Cocktails Template with Customers in Pilla
Egg cocktails are one of those areas where the food safety risk is real but the policy is straightforward. I've reviewed bar operations where the team makes 50 whisky sours a night and handles the pasteurised egg perfectly, and I've seen places where a bartender runs out mid-shift and cracks a shell egg into the shaker because "it's just one drink." That one drink is an uncontrolled Salmonella risk going straight into a glass with no cooking step between the shaker and the customer.
The fix is simple: pasteurised liquid egg only, stored correctly, used within 2 days of opening, and vulnerable customers warned before they order. This article covers what the law expects, gives you a template you can edit for your own bar, and flags the mistakes I see most often when I'm advising businesses on this.
Key Takeaways
- What are raw egg cocktails in food safety? Any drink containing egg, such as whisky sours, pisco sours, and fizzes, that won't be heat-treated before service. Because there's no cooking step, the egg must be pasteurised to control Salmonella risk
- Why do you need a raw egg cocktails policy? Regulation (EC) 852/2004 requires you to control cross-contamination risks, and serving unpasteurised shell eggs in drinks is a direct Salmonella hazard. Your EHO will expect a documented procedure covering which egg products are permitted, how they're stored, and how vulnerable customers are warned
- How do you set it up in Pilla? Use the knowledge hub template below, edit it to match your operation, and share it with your team through the app so everyone has access and you can track who's read it
- How do you automate the follow-up? Set up Poppi to chase staff who haven't acknowledged the policy and flag when it's due for review
Article Content
Understanding What's Required of You
Raw eggs in cocktails create a specific cross-contamination risk. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella on the surface and inside the egg itself. With cooked food, heat kills the bacteria. With a whisky sour or a pisco sour, there's no heat step. The drink goes from shaker to glass to customer, and if there's Salmonella in that egg, it goes with it.
Pasteurised liquid egg solves this. The pasteurisation process heat-treats the egg enough to kill pathogenic bacteria, including Salmonella, without cooking it. The egg still behaves like raw egg in the shaker. You get the same foam, the same texture, the same mouthfeel. But the dangerous bacteria have been dealt with before the product reaches your bar.
The legal basis sits under Regulation (EC) 852/2004, which requires food business operators to control cross-contamination risks. Serving unpasteurised shell eggs in a drink that won't be cooked is a contamination risk you're expected to manage. Your food safety management system needs to document how you control it: which egg products are permitted, how they're stored, the shelf life once opened, and how you handle vulnerable customers.
When an EHO inspects a bar that serves egg cocktails, they'll want to see three things. First, that you're using pasteurised egg, not shell eggs. Second, that your storage and labelling is correct: chilled below 5 degrees, opened bottles dated, nothing past the 2-day window. Third, that your team knows to warn vulnerable groups, which includes the very young, the elderly, pregnant women, and anyone who is immunocompromised or immunosuppressed. I've seen bars lose marks for having the right product on the shelf but no evidence that staff knew the rules around it.
The 2-day rule after opening is the one that catches people out most often. Once the seal is broken, the product must be used within 2 days. Opened Monday, used by end of Wednesday. Not Thursday. The day you open it counts as day one. After that window, bacterial growth may have reached unsafe levels even in a properly chilled fridge. The product gets discarded regardless of how much is left.
Setting It Up as a Knowledge Hub Entry
I've built a raw egg cocktails template in Pilla covering pasteurised egg requirements, storage rules, the 2-day rule, vulnerable group warnings, and corrective actions. It gives your bar team a clear reference for how egg is handled during service.
In the knowledge hub, create a new entry and tag it with "Food Safety Management System". Use the same tag across all of your food safety policies so they are grouped together and Poppi can track them as a set. Assign the entry to all teams so that everyone in the business can access it.
The template is designed to be edited, not just filed. If your bar uses a specific brand of pasteurised egg, name it. If you have multiple bar stations, add a note about keeping separate bottles at each station. If you run a cocktail menu that changes seasonally, reference which current drinks contain egg. The EHO wants to see that the policy reflects your operation, not that you've filed a generic document and forgotten about it.
Raw eggs are a classic ingredient in many traditional cocktails. Many recipes can be enhanced by nature of flavour and appearance by use of raw eggs in cocktails. When raw eggs are shaken in a cocktail the protein is agitated and when it mixes with air it produces a foamy layer on top.
It is essential that the hygiene policy is in place to ensure that staff follow strict procedures and guidelines so that cross contamination of food with pathogenic bacteria does not occur.
Staff must follow the following safety points in order to achieve a consistent level of safety.
Pasteurised eggs
- Pasteurised liquid egg is an alternative to shell eggs, they can provide a safer alternative as a previous heat treatment will kill off pathogenic bacteria
- Pasteurised liquid egg must be stored correctly in refrigerated storage below 5°c and use by dates must be adhered to strictly
- Once the seal has been broken on the bottle/carton the product must be kept chilled and used within 2 days. E.g. Opened Monday must be used by the end of Wednesday
- It is the policy of the company that only pasteurized liquid egg can be used in drinks that require egg, raw eggs must not be used in drinks under any circumstances
Vulnerable groups
- Any customer that falls into the category of being a vulnerable person must be warned by staff that the product contains raw pasteurised eggs
- Vulnerable groups include the very young, the elderly, pregnant ladies and anyone who is immunocompromised or immunosuppressed
Corrective actions
- Discard any bottles / cartons of pasteurized egg if found to be damaged in any way including seals not intact, out of use by date or the storage time has exceeded two days after opening
- Record any product that has been discarded and the reason
- Retrain any staff who do not follow the safety points and increase supervision until competency can be shown
Record keeping
- Food poisoning, allergen incidents and foreign body contamination must be recorded, and corrective actions taken recorded
- Contraventions of the above safety points must be recorded, and any corrective actions taken also recorded
- Record any instances of retraining of staff
This is a preview of the template. In Pilla, you can edit this to match your business.
What I'd want to see when reviewing this:
The pasteurised egg section is the foundation. I'd want to see that your policy is explicit: only pasteurised liquid egg, no shell eggs, no exceptions. That clarity matters because the most common failure I see is a bartender running out of pasteurised egg and reaching for shell eggs as a stopgap. The policy needs to leave no room for interpretation on this point.
The 2-day rule needs to be spelled out with a worked example. "Opened Monday, use by end of Wednesday" is the kind of concrete detail that sticks with bar staff. I'd also want to see that you require date labelling the moment a bottle is opened. A bottle without a date on it is a bottle you can't trust, and that means it gets thrown away. Labelling takes seconds and saves waste.
The vulnerable groups section should list who counts as vulnerable and include a script or prompt for how staff raise it with customers. Something like "this cocktail contains raw pasteurised egg, is that okay for you?" is enough. The point is that it happens before the drink is made, not after.
Common mistakes I see:
The biggest one is shell egg substitution. A bartender runs out of pasteurised egg on a busy Friday, and instead of telling customers the egg cocktails are unavailable, they crack a shell egg into the shaker. I've seen this happen more than once. The policy needs to be clear that running out of pasteurised egg means those drinks come off until you have more stock, not that you switch to an uncontrolled product.
The second is poor date labelling. Bottles get opened during a rush, nobody writes the date on them, and by the next day nobody can say with certainty when the bottle was opened. If you can't confirm the date, you discard it. That's waste that proper labelling would have prevented.
I also see bars that warn some customers about egg content but not others. The warning should be part of the standard service routine for any drink containing egg, not a judgement call the bartender makes based on whether the customer looks like they might be in a vulnerable group. You can't tell by looking at someone whether they're immunocompromised.
Automate the Follow-Up with Poppi
Writing the policy is one thing. Making sure your team has actually read it is another. Poppi can handle the chasing so you don't have to.
If you mark the knowledge hub entry as mandatory, Poppi will track who's read it and who hasn't. You can set up automations to chase staff who are behind, notify managers when someone completes the policy, and get a regular report showing where the gaps are.
Here are three automations I'd set up for any knowledge hub policy:
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Overdue training reminders
Automatically chase team members who have mandatory policies they haven't read yet. Poppi sends the reminder so you don't have to.
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Video completion alerts
Get notified when a team member finishes reading or watching a policy, so you can track progress without chasing.
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.
Training gap analysis
Get a regular AI report showing which team members are behind on mandatory policies and where the gaps are across your team.
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.