The 7:15 a.m. Delivery and a 5°C Walk-In
At 7:15 a.m. a 90-seat bistro receives its weekly delivery. The receiver is a dishwasher who has never been trained on receiving. The invoice lists: 12 kg of frozen shrimp at an internal temperature of -2°C, with soft, partly collapsed boxes and loose ice crystals and pink liquid in the liner; 20 L of 2% milk reading 9°C at the carton surface; 6 kg of raw chicken breasts reading 6°C, packed in the same unlined crate as 4 kg of romaine; canned crushed tomatoes, one can with a dent along the side seam; and 15 dozen shell eggs at 12°C with one cracked egg in the top flat. The walk-in cooler is at 5°C; staff say the door was left ajar overnight and the gasket is torn. The only thermometer in the building is the dial gauge mounted on the cooler wall. Yesterday's delivery of cooked sliced roast beef is still in the cooler, unlabelled and undated.
1. For each delivered item, state accept or reject and give the food safety reason: shrimp, milk, chicken, romaine, canned tomatoes, eggs.
Read the worked answer
Shrimp - reject. At -2°C with soft, collapsed boxes, loose ice crystals, and pink liquid in the liner, this product has thawed and begun to refreeze. Ice crystals and fluid loss are the visible signature of temperature abuse during transport, and refreezing concentrates the risk. Frozen product should arrive solid, with clean packaging and no free liquid.
Milk - reject. Fluid milk is a potentially hazardous food and must arrive at 4°C or below. At 9°C it has spent an unknown time in the danger zone, and the receiver has no way to establish how long.
Chicken - reject. Raw poultry must arrive at 4°C or below; 6°C is out of compliance. It is also packed in the same unlined crate as romaine, which means raw poultry juices may already have contacted a ready-to-eat food. Both the chicken and the romaine go back.
Romaine - reject. Cross-contaminated by the raw chicken in the shared crate and a ready-to-eat food with no kill step. There is no way to salvage it.
Canned tomatoes - reject the dented can. A dent on the side seam is a potential breach of the hermetic seal, which creates a Clostridium botulinum risk. Minor dents on the body of the can with no sharp crease may be acceptable in some operations, but a seam dent never is. Also check for swelling, leakage, and rust; the rest of the case can be accepted if the cans are sound.
Eggs - reject. Shell eggs must arrive refrigerated and clean; 12°C is too warm, and a cracked egg is a Salmonella risk that contaminates the whole flat. Refuse the cracked flat and the warm delivery, and require the supplier to deliver under temperature control.
The receiving principle: a receiver needs a probe thermometer and a written spec sheet, not a signature. The trained receiver has authority to refuse; the dishwasher in this scenario had neither training nor thermometer and should never have been the person at the door.
2. The walk-in is sitting at 5°C and has been since at least yesterday. What do you do about the food inside, and about the cooler itself?
Read the worked answer
Do not assume the food is fine because it is 'in the fridge'. Potentially hazardous food must be held at 4°C or below. The cooler is 5°C, and the door was ajar overnight, so the real question is how long the food has been above 4°C - and nobody can currently answer that, because there is no log and no way to reconstruct the history.
Step 1: Stabilise. Move product to a working cooler or into iced containers, and check internal temperatures of the product, not just the air. Air temperature and product temperature can differ by several degrees, especially with a torn gasket and an open door.
Step 2: Assess and separate. Product that has been above 4°C for more than a short, unverifiable period cannot be shown to be safe. The written, undated roast beef is the clearest case - there is no date, no cooling record, and no way to establish its age. It is discarded, along with any other unlabelled or undated potentially hazardous food. Where an operation can demonstrate the time-temperature history, the 2-hour/4-hour style decision rules may guide the call; where it cannot, discard. Never taste-test.
Step 3: Fix the equipment. Replace the torn gasket, verify the door closes and seals, and get at least one probe thermometer plus a cooler thermometer - the wall dial cannot measure food. Service the unit and confirm it holds 4°C or below before restocking.
Step 4: Start the log. Twice-daily cooler temperatures, product temperatures, and a corrective-action column. Yesterday's failure to keep a log is precisely why the roast beef has to be thrown out; the log is what lets the next person keep the food.
3. Describe how the accepted deliveries should be stored in the walk-in, and what receiving records this bistro should keep.
Read the worked answer
Storage order - the physical layout is a control, not a convenience.
- Raw poultry on the bottom shelf, then raw ground meat and whole-muscle fish above it, then whole cuts of beef and pork, then ready-to-eat foods at the top. The rule is that nothing drips onto anything that will not be cooked.
- Separate, leak-proof containers for raw animal foods - never an open crate shared with romaine, and never the original cardboard on the floor or stacked with RTE product.
- Keep RTE foods covered and labelled with the product name, date prepared or opened, and a discard date. The unlabelled roast beef in this scenario is exactly what a date-marking system prevents.
- Store at least 15 cm (6 inches) off the floor and away from the walls to allow air movement; do not block the evaporator fan.
- Keep chemicals entirely out of the walk-in, and never above food.
Receiving records to keep.
- Date, time, supplier, invoice number, and the initials of the trained receiver.
- Product temperatures taken with a calibrated probe thermometer, item by item, plus a note that frozen goods were solid.
- Packaging condition: dents, leaks, torn liners, pest evidence.
- Accept/reject decisions and the reason, including items refused and whether a credit was issued.
- Corrective actions: who was told, what was returned, what was discarded.
- Then in storage, temperature logs for the cooler, mapped to the same dates.
Why bother. In an outbreak investigation or an inspection, records are what separate 'we had a problem and controlled it' from 'we had a problem and sold it anyway.' The cost is a clipboard and two minutes at the door; the cost of not having it is a discarded week of stock or a closed kitchen.