The 9.4 °C walk-in before a 58-cover lunch
At 08:10 on a Saturday, the duty manager of a 70-cover family restaurant finds the walk-in cold room at 9.4 °C; the log shows 4.1 °C at 06:00. The compressor has failed and the repair technician cannot arrive before 13:00. Inside are 40 kg of chicken breast delivered at 03 °C at 07:30, 15 kg of cooked sliced beef from yesterday, open milk, and 20 kg of salad. The restaurant serves lunch from 12:00 and has 58 bookings, including a table of eight celebrating a birthday. The chef wants to move the chicken to the small under-counter fridge, but it is already full with desserts and has a recorded temperature of 6 °C. A blast chiller is available, as is a nearby takeaway with a spare cold room that has offered space until 11:00. The kitchen porter has already put the salad on the pass for prep.
1. What are your first three decisions, in order, and why?
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- Stop relying on the air temperature and probe the food. A 9.4 °C air reading does not prove the food is at 9.4 °C, especially after a 07:30 delivery. Probe the chicken, cooked beef, milk and salad separately and write down product temperature and time. The decision must follow product temperature, not the room display.
- Segregate by risk and move the high-risk items first. The raw chicken is the priority because it will be cooked, but the cooked beef and milk are ready-to-eat and have no later kill step. Move chicken and beef to the blast chiller or the takeaway cold room; keep them separate from desserts. Do not put 40 kg of chicken into a 6 °C under-counter fridge that is already full, because it will not cool and may raise the temperature of the desserts.
- Treat the salad as suspect. It has already been taken to the pass for prep, so record how long it has been out. If it cannot be verified as under 5 °C for less than two hours, discard it rather than serve it. Then record the incident, call the technician, and plan a reduced menu if the cold room is not restored by 11:00.
2. The chicken probes 7.2 °C at 08:25. Decide whether it can be used for lunch, and justify your answer using time and temperature reasoning.
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The chicken was delivered at 03 °C at 07:30, so it has spent at most 55 minutes in a warming unit, but the product temperature is now 7.2 °C. That is above the 5 °C cold-holding target but below 8 °C, and the time above 5 °C appears short. Because the chicken is raw and will receive a cooking step, the risk is lower than for ready-to-eat beef. My decision would be conditional: move it immediately to the blast chiller, cool it back to 5 °C or below within 90 minutes, keep it separate, and use it only for today's lunch after cooking to at least 75 °C at the core. Do not refreeze it and do not carry it into tomorrow's service. If the probe shows above 8 °C, or if the time above 5 °C cannot be established, discard it.
The cooked sliced beef is different. It is ready-to-eat and will not be cooked again, so a 7.2 °C reading is a much higher risk. Unless it can be shown to have been above 5 °C for less than two hours and is rapidly chilled, I would discard it. The salad, having been on the pass, would also be discarded if its time out of refrigeration cannot be verified. The reasoning is not 'the fridge is broken, so throw everything away'; it is 'what is the product temperature, how long has it been there, and will there be a kill step?'
3. What records and communication should follow this incident?
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Record the time the high temperature was found, the air temperature, each product's temperature and time, the action taken for each item, the weight discarded, and who authorised the decision. Keep the delivery note for the chicken and the repair call reference. Complete an incident report because the cold room failed and product may be lost; this supports supplier or insurer claims.
Communicate immediately to the chef and front of house. If the cooked beef or salad is discarded, adjust the menu and tell the birthday table before they order, offering a specific alternative rather than waiting for complaints. Do not tell guests that 'everything is fine' if an item has been removed. At the end of service, review the log: was the 06:00 check actually done, and why was the failure not noticed until 08:10? The useful outcome is a corrected monitoring routine, not just a filled-in form.