Temperature log gap during a busy service
You are the sous chef at a 90-seat bistro. During Friday dinner service, the walk-in cool room's compressor fails at 6:10 pm. The digital display reads 9°C by 7:00 pm and staff are still plating mains. The cool room holds 40 kg of raw chicken thigh, 12 L of house-made aioli, 8 kg of cooked prawns, and 30 kg of raw vegetables. The last documented temperature check was at 4:30 pm (3°C). Your head chef is off-site and unreachable. The venue's food safety program requires potentially hazardous food above 5°C for more than two hours to be assessed before use. The refrigeration mechanic says the earliest repair is 10:00 pm.
1. What do you do in the first 30 minutes, and how do you justify each action against the food safety program and your duty as supervisor?
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Immediate actions (first 30 minutes)
- Protect the cold chain for what can be saved. Move the highest-risk items (chicken, prawns, aioli) into the functioning cool room or into insulated containers with ice/gel packs, and record the time of transfer. Vegetables are lower risk but still move them if space allows.
- Start a written incident log. Record: compressor failure time (6:10 pm), last verified check (4:30 pm, 3°C), readings at 7:00 pm (9°C), and every action with a timestamp. This log is your evidence if food must be discarded or if an environmental health officer inspects.
- Apply the two-hour rule conservatively. The food has been above 5°C since sometime between 4:30 and 7:00 pm. Even using the most favourable assumption, you cannot prove the chicken and prawns stayed below 5°C for less than two hours by the time you would serve them. The program requires assessment before use - so the default is do not use until assessed.
- Assess by category, not by whole room. Raw chicken and cooked prawns are high-risk and cannot be verified, so quarantine them (label 'DO NOT USE - under assessment'). The aioli is an emulsion with raw egg and acid; acid and salt reduce but do not eliminate risk, so treat it as high-risk too. Raw vegetables that will be cooked are lower risk but must be used or discarded within the program's limits.
- Tell the team. Brief the pass and floor staff so nothing is served from quarantined stock, and adjust the menu (86 the chicken and prawn dishes) rather than improvise.
Justification
As supervisor you are accountable for the food safety program, not just for tonight's covers. The defensible position is: you cannot demonstrate compliance for the high-risk items, so you remove them from service and document why. Serving them because 'it was probably fine' is exactly the judgement the program exists to prevent. You also protect the business: a documented, conservative decision is far cheaper than a foodborne illness outbreak or a failed inspection.
2. At 9:30 pm the mechanic confirms the repair will not finish until after midnight. How do you decide what to discard versus what to keep, and what records do you leave?
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Decision framework
By 9:30 pm the high-risk items have been in a warming environment for at least 2.5 hours (and likely longer). The two-hour threshold in the program has been exceeded, so the default is discard. Use these tests:
- Can I prove time/temperature compliance? No - the gap between 4:30 and 7:00 pm is unverified. Unverified high-risk food is discarded.
- Is the food going to be cooked to a validated kill step? Raw chicken that will be thoroughly cooked could be argued, but you cannot verify its history, so discard it. Do not use 'we'll cook it hard' as a rescue for food you cannot account for.
- Is it low-risk? Whole raw vegetables that are intact and will be peeled/cooked can be kept if they are visually sound and moved to working refrigeration once repaired - but record the decision and the reasoning.
What to discard
- 40 kg raw chicken thigh - discard (unverified, high-risk).
- 8 kg cooked prawns - discard (ready-to-eat, high-risk, no kill step).
- 12 L aioli - discard (raw egg emulsion, ready-to-eat).
- Any cut or prepared vegetables - discard. Intact whole vegetables may be retained if they pass a sensory check and are returned to verified cold storage.
Records to leave
- Completed incident report: timeline, readings, actions, who authorised each decision.
- Waste record: item, quantity, reason, date, signature (this also feeds your stock-loss and costing records).
- Photographs of the thermometer readings and the quarantined stock.
- A note in the temperature log explaining the gap and the corrective action.
- A handover note to the head chef and, if required by your program, notification to the food safety supervisor.
Why this matters
The exam tests whether you can apply a rule under pressure and produce an auditable trail. Discarding 60 kg of stock is expensive, but the decision is defensible because it is documented and rule-based. Keeping food you cannot verify is indefensible even if it turns out to be fine.