Any establishment handling food must follow HACCP principles and keep a food-safety management plan. In an inspection, that document — and your records — are what get checked. Here are the essentials.
What is HACCP?
HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) is a method for analysing and controlling food-safety hazards. In the EU it’s made mandatory by the Hygiene Package (Regulation EC 852/2004) for all food professionals.
The food-safety management plan
This is the document that formalises your hygiene controls. In practice it gathers:
- Good hygiene practices (staff, premises, equipment)
- The HACCP plan (hazards, critical control points)
- Traceability and non-conformity procedures
- Your records: temperature logs, cleaning plan, etc.
The daily logs to keep
This is where it usually breaks down. You need to record, regularly:
- Temperatures of fridges, freezers and displays
- Oil changes for fryers
- Cleaning tasks completed (ideally with proof)
- Expiry labels for open products and house preparations
On paper, these records get lost, forgotten, and are hard to present in an inspection.
Going digital
A digital solution changes everything: scheduled logs with alerts if one is missed or a temperature is out of range, validations from a mobile (even for a seasonal worker with no account), and above all a food-safety plan exported as PDF, ready to present.
FoodCostOS includes a full food-safety (HACCP) suite — equipment, temperature logs, cleaning plan, expiry labels and a management plan (PDF) — so you can face a hygiene inspection with peace of mind, without a binder of paperwork.