Nine degrees at six in the morning
At a neighbourhood supermarket's dairy and frozen section, a five-hour power cut begins at 11 p.m. The inverter is wired only to lights, the POS and the CCTV, not to the chillers. At 6 a.m. the chiller thermometer reads 9°C; the normal range is 2–4°C. In stock: 48 litres of toned milk pouches (some dated tomorrow), 25 kg of paneer, 60 ice-cream packs and 30 kg of curd. The stock register shows 48 litres of milk but only 41 litres are counted; three pouches are swollen. A helper suggests moving the paneer to the freezer, re-stamping the milk date and selling the ice cream at a 30% discount. The store holds an FSSAI licence, but there is no written cold-chain SOP and no temperature log for the past week. The owner is away and calls to say, 'Don't waste stock, we'll manage'.
1. Decide what can and cannot be sold, and justify the decision in terms of both risk and money.
Read the worked answer
Nothing in that chiller is saleable as fresh stock.
- Toned milk pouches: pasteurised milk held at 9°C for five hours has been in the danger zone long enough for spoilage organisms to multiply. Three swollen pouches already prove it. Discard the batch; do not re-stamp, do not sell at a discount.
- Paneer: high moisture and high protein, the worst combination for rapid spoilage. Discard or return to the supplier with a written rejection.
- Curd: same reasoning, discard.
- Ice cream: partially melted and refrozen ice cream has large ice crystals and a gritty texture, and the cold chain is broken. Not saleable.
- Moving paneer into the freezer does not rescue it; it changes the product and hides a safety failure.
The money. Rough replacement value: milk 48 × ₹50 ≈ ₹2,400; paneer 25 × ₹320 ≈ ₹8,000; ice cream 60 × ₹40 ≈ ₹2,400; curd 30 × ₹70 ≈ ₹2,100 - about ₹14,900. That is a real loss, but a food-poisoning complaint, an FSSAI inspection finding, or a criminal case under the Food Safety and Standards Act costs far more than ₹14,900 in fines, closure and lost footfall.
Do it properly: photograph the thermometer reading and the stock, segregate it in a marked 'not for sale' crate, record it in a spoilage register, and claim from the supplier or insurer where the terms allow. A 30% discount on unsafe food is illegal, not thrifty.
2. The register says 48 litres of milk but 41 are physically counted. How should the discrepancy be investigated and recorded?
Read the worked answer
Do not simply rewrite the register to 41. Investigate in this order:
- Recount with two people. Recount the chiller, the back store and the display crate, checking pouches pushed to the back. Recounting rules out a simple counting error first.
- Check inward documents. Compare the goods received note, supplier invoice and the delivery challan. A short delivery entered as full receipt is the commonest cause of a 7-unit gap.
- Check outward records. Look at the POS sales lines, any manual bills from an offline period, staff purchases, and transfers to a second outlet.
- Check returns and damage. Three swollen pouches are already accounted for; see whether they were removed from stock without a register entry.
- Ask about the power cut. Staff may have discarded melted or suspect stock informally during the night, which is a process failure, not a theft.
The gap is 7 litres, roughly ₹350 at cost - small in money but important as a signal. Record it on the stock discrepancy sheet with the cause if found, or as 'unexplained shrinkage' if not, signed by the counter staff and the supervisor. Then fix the routine: a daily opening count of dairy, a receiving check against invoices, and one person responsible for the cold room. Never adjust the book figure silently, because the same unexplained gap will recur next month.
3. Draft the cold-chain and stock-handling SOP the store should have had, covering what to do during a power cut.
Read the worked answer
Cold-chain SOP - one page, posted in the dairy section.
Before an incident
- Chillers at 2–4°C and freezers at −18°C; check and log temperature twice daily (opening and closing) on a dated sheet, signed by the checker.
- Back up chillers and freezers on the inverter or a generator; test the changeover monthly.
- FEFO rotation: new stock behind old, daily check of near-expiry stock, and a 'sell first' shelf label.
- Raw and ready-to-eat items separated; sealed crates; no cardboard on the floor.
During a power cut
- Keep doors closed; do not open the chiller to 'check'.
- Note the start and end time of the outage.
- Do not move paneer or milk to freezers to hide the problem.
After an incident
- Record the maximum temperature and the duration. If it exceeds 4°C for more than two hours, treat the stock as unsafe.
- Segregate into a marked crate away from sale stock, photograph it, and record it in the spoilage register.
- Inform the owner in writing, even if the answer is 'manage it'; the written record protects the staff.
- Dispose of unsafe stock through a documented channel, never to staff or to a discount counter.
People and documents
- Every food handler trained on hygiene and the SOP, with a signature.
- FSSAI licence displayed; pest-control and medical-fitness records kept.
- Monthly review of spoilage value as a percentage of dairy sales; a rising figure points to equipment, not staff.