Guides / For managers

Your written food-safety plan

The document behind the records — what you do, why, and what happens when it goes wrong. An inspector asks for this before they ask for a single temperature.

About 25 minutes

1. Open the plan

   HACCP → Plan, then your venue. A draft is created the first time you open it, pre-filled with your company and premises details. Nothing is published to anyone until you declare it.

2. Say which steps you actually have

   Every step of a food operation is listed — delivery, storage, preparation, cold display, defrosting, cooking, cooling, reheating, hot holding, transport, allergens and the rest. Mark each one applies or not applicable. A café that never hot-holds says so once, and the pack says so too.

3. Let it read your records first

   Suggest from what you record fills in the obvious answers from the checks you already run — no hot-hold check, so hot holding is marked not applicable. It never overwrites an answer you've given yourself. Treat it as a first draft, not a decision.

4. Work through the controls

   Under each step that applies are the controls — what you do, how it's checked, and what you do when it isn't right. Each one shows whether the record form that evidences it is actually running at this venue, so a control you claim but never check is visible rather than assumed.

5. Answer the basics underneath

   Traceability, cleaning, pest control, waste, maintenance, personal hygiene, training, probe calibration. These sit under every step and an inspector will ask about them by name.

6. Attach the paper you already have

   Scan the old binder, the pest contract, any written policies, and upload them to the plan. Paper you already rely on doesn't need retyping — it needs to be findable.

7. Declare it

   Name yourself and the people responsible for putting it into practice. That sets your annual review date, and the plan becomes Part 1 of the EHO pack. You'll be reminded before the review falls due.

When it doesn't go to plan

• "Not yet" is not "no". Anything nobody has answered stays visibly unanswered — a blank plan reads as unfinished, never as compliant. That's deliberate.
• The wording is a starting point, not legal advice. Read every control and change anything that doesn't match how you actually work. Once you declare it, it is your plan and you are the food business operator responsible for it.
• Review it once a year, and whenever you change what you do. A new menu, a new bit of kit or a new site is a reason to re-open it — not just the calendar.

Stuck on something that isn't here? Mail hello@hospitech.ie and tell us what you were trying to do. The gap is ours, not yours.

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