Keep the records that show your food safety system is being used: your HACCP plan or official pack, routine checks, anything that went wrong and what you did about it, reviews, training, deliveries and daily hygiene records. If an inspector asks how you control a risk, you should be able to show the method and recent evidence that the team followed it.
This is a restaurant-friendly map, not a universal stack of forms. The right records depend on the size and nature of your operation. Start with the official framework for your nation, then keep the records needed to show the controls in that framework work in your kitchen.
The records to keep
- Your completed HACCP plan or food safety management pack.
- Monitoring records, such as fridge, cook, cool, reheat and hot-hold checks.
- Deviation and corrective-action records when a control is not met.
- Verification and review records, including changes to the plan or pack.
- Training records and the instructions staff use.
- Supplier, delivery and traceability records.
- Cleaning records and the daily diary or equivalent daily checks.
What the law requires, and what official guidance adds
The legal requirement: food businesses must put in place, implement and maintain procedures based on HACCP principles. Those principles include keeping documents and records proportionate to the nature and size of the business. The FSA's HACCP guidance explains the practical purpose: identify hazards, set controls, monitor them, act when something goes wrong, verify the controls and keep records that show the system works.
Official guidance: the FSA's Safer food, better business guidance gives small businesses a ready-made food safety management pack for England and Wales. It includes safe methods, a diary and supporting records. If you work in Scotland or Northern Ireland, use the right national framework instead. Our official-system chooser explains the differences.
A practical record map for a restaurant
1. Your HACCP plan or completed pack
Keep the current version of the pack or plan that describes your controls. For many restaurants in England and Wales that will be an SFBB pack completed for their own menu and ways of working. It is not enough to download it. The FSA says to complete the safe methods that apply before food operations start, then make sure staff follow them and complete the diary every day.
Keep a note of significant changes too: a new process, a different ingredient, new equipment, a layout change or a revised control. That gives you a clear trail for why the current method looks the way it does.
2. Monitoring records
Monitoring is the proof that the controls in the plan happened when they were meant to. MyHACCP's official monitoring guidance says records should state the actual result, date and time, and identify the person carrying out the check. What you monitor and how often should come from your own system, not a generic online template.
- Cold storage and freezer readings where your procedures require them.
- Cooking, cooling, reheating and hot-holding checks for the foods and steps you control.
- Opening, closing and other daily hygiene checks.
- Checks of equipment or probes where your procedures call for them.
For a practical temperature routine, see our guide to fridge temperature checks.
3. Deviations and corrective actions
A record should not pretend every day was perfect. When monitoring shows a control was missed or out of limit, record the result, the affected food or equipment, the immediate action and the person who made the decision. If the same problem keeps appearing, review the underlying method rather than writing the same note every week.
This matches the HACCP principle of establishing corrective action when monitoring shows a critical control point is not under control. The official MyHACCP record-keeping guide lists deviations and their associated corrective actions as core records.
4. Verification and review records
Verification asks whether the system is still working in practice. A manager's review of completed checks, a scheduled pack review, probe checks and records of changes can all form part of it, if they are relevant to your system. MyHACCP's verification guidance says reviews should be scheduled and also triggered by changes within the business.
Keep the review outcome even when it confirms that no change was needed. It shows the plan was looked at, rather than left in a drawer.
5. Training and staff instructions
Keep training records that show who was trained, what they were trained on and when. These can sit alongside the staff-facing safe methods, cleaning instructions and task sheets they need to follow. MyHACCP includes training undertaken and training needs analysis among its documentation examples.
6. Traceability and delivery records
Keep enough information to trace food back to the supplier. The SFBB introduction says businesses must keep a record of food products bought, who they were bought from, quantity, date and allergen information. In a restaurant, invoices and receipts may do much of this work. A delivery record can add the condition, temperature or rejection decision where your procedure needs it.
Do not separate this from your response to a problem. A rejected or questionable delivery should lead to a record of what was done with the goods and, where needed, the supplier conversation.
7. Cleaning and daily diary records
Cleaning schedules say what should happen. The sign-off or diary entry shows it happened. SFBB's diary is designed for daily opening and closing checks, notes on problems and actions, staff names and a regular review. Pair it with a clear opening and closing routine so the checks are done during service, not reconstructed before a visit.
How long to keep food safety records
There is no single retention period that fits every UK food business. MyHACCP's Principle 7 guidance says the period should be appropriate to the nature and size of the operation, and asks businesses to consider the shelf life of the product and how it might be misused. If you need a decision for a specific product or process, ask your local authority environmental health team.
There is one clear SFBB instruction for its diary. Keep completed diary pages safely until your next visit from a local-authority food safety officer. The FSA says this can be electronic or printed. That instruction is for the SFBB diary, not a universal retention rule for every record in every business.
Make records part of service
- Set each check in the part of the shift when it can actually happen.
- Give the person doing the work a simple way to record the real result.
- Make the corrective action field impossible to ignore when there is a problem.
- Review recent records at a set interval and after a meaningful change.
Paper can do this. Digital records can do it too. The important part is that the record is accurate, attributable and tied to the method your team actually follows. Our comparison of paper and digital food safety records covers the trade-offs without assuming one format is right for every kitchen.
Where Lemon fits
Lemon is for the day-to-day evidence, not for writing a HACCP plan. It records temperatures and cook, cool, reheat and hot-hold food checks, deliveries, checklists and issues, then exports records as a PDF. You still need to choose, complete and maintain the food safety system behind those checks. If a connection drops, Lemon can queue a record while the app remains open. Pending writes do not survive a force-quit, so it does not provide durable offline recording.
