Printable fridge temperature log sheet

Two daily readings, at the start and end of service, is the most common practice in food service. The frequency that matters is the one written into your own food safety plan - that document is what an inspector checks against, not a universal rule.

Keeping records for at least a year is the generally recommended practice, covering a full cycle of activity and typical product shelf lives. Check the retention period set by your own food safety plan, which may be longer depending on the foods handled.

Never correct the value: record the temperature actually observed, then the corrective action taken (moving stock, defrosting, calling the refrigeration engineer, disposal if required) and the time. A sheet showing no anomaly at all over twelve months reads as suspicious to an inspector, not as diligence.

Yes. A connected recorder measures continuously, timestamps every value and keeps the history with no human action, which removes both forgotten readings and entries reconstructed from memory. Paper sheets remain useful as a backup and for spot checks of core food temperature, which an ambient probe does not cover.

Read the thermometer placed inside the enclosure, not the setpoint the appliance displays, once the door has been shut for a while; write the value as read, with the date, the time and your initials; compare it with the limit set for that enclosure in the food safety plan; and, if it exceeds it, note the action taken. Two readings a day, at the start and end of service, is the most common practice; the frequency that counts is the one in your plan.

It is the grid the readings are written on: one row per day, one column per enclosure and time slot, with the limit to hold at the head of the column and a box for the initials. The sheet generated on this page is that table, preset with your enclosures and their limits, 31 days per A4 page.

Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 requires the cold chain to be controlled and records to be kept; in France, the order of 21 December 2009 sets the maximum storage temperatures: +2 °C for minced meat preparations, +4 °C for cooked dishes and highly perishable foods, +8 °C for other perishable foods, -18 °C for quick-frozen food. The full table, with its sources, is on the storage temperatures page.

The appliance display gives the value of its own probe or its setpoint, not that of the food. The useful reading comes from a thermometer placed inside the enclosure, at the warmest point, often at the top and near the door, read once the temperature has settled after an opening. A minimum-maximum thermometer also shows what happened between two visits; a logger shows it continuously.

The KelvinTrack Android app is free: with a KelvinTag sensor in the enclosure, it reads the temperature over Bluetooth and sends it to the dashboard, also free, which keeps the timestamped history and exports it as a PDF. The sensor is bought once, with no subscription. It does not replace the core probe for cooking and cooling measurements.

Same moves and same sheet: one column per cold room, the limit of the most demanding food at the head, two readings a day or your plan's frequency. Two things change. Where you read: in a cold room the gap between the warmest and the coldest point is real, and the useful measurement is at the worst-case point, the one a temperature mapping finds, not next to the evaporator. And the night: a cold room goes through deliveries, door openings and defrosts between two readings, which a thermometer read morning and evening does not see; that is where a logger replaces the sheet.