Maintaining the cold chain.

• COLD CHAIN IS THE CONTROLLING OF THE TEMPERATURE OF A PRODUCT FROM RAW TO FINAL PRODUCT TO ENSURE THAT THE TEMPERATURE WAS CONSTANT THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS
• WHEN A REFRIGERATED PRODUCT IS DELIVERED TO YOUR STORE, DO NOT ALLOW THE STAFF TO UNLOAD UNTIL YOU HAVE CHECKED THEIR VEHICLE TEMPERATURE
• SECONDLY, CHECK THE ITEM THAT YOU ARE RECEIVING TO ENSURE THE CORE TEMPERATURE IS WITHIN SPEC
• PACK AWAY THE ITEM RECEIVED SOONEST INTO YOUR REFRIGERATION BEFORE THE TEMPERATURE CHANGES
• THEN DEFROSTING SHOULD HAPPEN IN A COLD ROOM
• AND THEN THE ACTUAL PORTIONING OF THE PRODUCT MAINTAINING THE TEMPERATURE BELOW 5 DEGREES
• THE PORTIONS THAT WERE MADE SHOULD THEN GO BACK INTO REFRIGERATION AT BELOW 5 DEGREES UNTIL USED
• RECORD ALL TEMPERATURES DURING THE STOCK MOVEMENT PROCESS
• RECORD TEMPERATURES ON YOUR DAILY TEMPERATURE CONTROL SHEET

The temperature control sheet is used to assist the restaurateur in maintaining the ever-important cold chain of chilled and frozen products.

• The temperature control sheet assists me to keep track of all equipment that is supposed to maintain a specific temperature.

• To maintain the cold chain for frozen and defrosting food items is not the only reason to keep a temperature control sheet.

• By keeping the temperature control sheet up to date will also show you in time when equipment is not working optimally and before you have a costly breakdown you can save money and downtime by cost-effective maintenance.

• Specifically on refrigeration units when you do not achieve goal temperatures you can do fault finding through cleaning dirty condenser units before calling out costly technicians. 

• For good measure and preventative maintenance, you can incorporate the condenser check into your daily equipment checks.

• The temperature of the geyser feeding warmed water to your dishwasher is imperative. If the water is warmed to 50 degrees then your dishwasher element will only work between 50 and 75 degrees so you might be saving up to 65% of the electricity that the dishwasher might draw normally.

• The warm water fed into your dishwasher water tank comes from a geyser that is warmed by a heat pump that takes the heat generated by your freezers to pre-warm the water in the geyser. You might call this “free energy” used to save.