The café opening checklist we used at Welsh Back

For the first six months at Welsh Back, opening the café was 90 minutes of panic. Someone would be on their knees behind the pastry counter looking for the spare till roll. The barista would be running hot water through the group heads while shouting that the milk fridge felt warm again. I'd be on the phone to the baker because the sourdough hadn't arrived. We'd open the door at 7am with the floor still wet and a queue of three already outside.

We rewrote the opening checklist eleven times across that first year. Eleven. Each version solved one problem and exposed another. The version we landed on was boring, specific, and printed on laminated A4 above the pass. It made opening take 35 minutes instead of 90, and more importantly, it became the daily paperwork that fed every EHO visit we ever had.

This is that checklist, what each step is actually for, and a printable template at the end you can adapt.

Why this matters

The opening checklist is not admin. It is the single most important food safety document you produce, because it is the only one created before anyone has had a chance to fix things. An EHO turning up at 10am will not be impressed by a spotless kitchen. They will ask to see the fridge temperature log from this morning, and the one from yesterday, and the one from last Tuesday. If the log shows a 4°C reading every day for six months in identical handwriting, they know it's been filled in retrospectively. They've seen it a thousand times.

Under the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013 and the FSA's Safer Food, Better Business framework, you are required to monitor critical control points and keep records. The opening checklist is where most of that monitoring happens in practice. Get it wrong and you don't just risk a poor hygiene rating, you lose the legal defence of due diligence if something goes wrong later.

The other reason it matters: it is the difference between a calm service and a chaotic one. A bad opening rolls into a bad lunch, which rolls into a bad evening. I learned this the slow way.

What the opening actually has to do

Strip it back. An opening has six jobs. Not ten. Not three. Six.

• Verify the previous night's close. Walk the room with the close-down checklist in hand. Was the canopy filter cleaned? Was the floor sink degreased? Were the chiller doors left ajar to dry? If something wasn't done, it gets done now, before service, and you have a quiet word with whoever closed.
• Record temperatures. Every fridge, every freezer, every hot hold unit if you've fired one up. Written down, with the time, signed. Not "all temps OK". The actual number.
• Confirm hot water at every handwash basin. Not the kitchen tap. The dedicated handwash. If there isn't hot water within 30 seconds, you have a problem to fix before anyone touches food.
• Check overnight deliveries against the allergen matrix. New supplier? Recipe substitution on a tub of pesto? It gets flagged and the matrix updated before service.
• Set up the til and count the float. Two people, ideally. Written down.
• Front-of-house readiness. Loos stocked, music on, specials board written, door open at the advertised time.

That's it. Everything else, brewing the first coffee, plating the breakfast specials, briefing the team, hangs off that spine.

Temperature checks done properly

At Welsh Back our walk-in chiller ran warm one summer because the condenser was clogged with kitchen dust. We didn't notice for three days because whoever was opening was writing "4°C" without actually looking at the gauge. We caught it when a delivery driver mentioned the milk felt soft. Three days of dairy at 8°C. We binned £400 of stock and had a hard conversation with the team.

The fix was simple. The checklist line changed from "Walk-in temp OK?" to "Walk-in temp: ____°C". You cannot tick a blank. You have to write a number. That one change caught two more fridge faults across the next two years.

For a typical café you'll be logging: pastry display, milk fridge, prep fridge, walk-in chiller, freezer, hot hold (if used). Six readings. Two minutes if your probe is calibrated and accessible.

Hot water at the handwash

This one gets missed constantly. A handwash basin with cold water only is not a handwash basin. It is a sink. The FSA expects hot running water, soap, and a means of drying at every dedicated handwash. If your boiler has been playing up overnight, you need to know at 6:45am, not when the EHO turns up at 11.

Run each handwash for 30 seconds. Write it down. If it's cold, you have time to call the plumber before service. If you find out at 11, you're shutting the kitchen.

The allergen matrix and overnight deliveries

Natasha's Law (the Food Information Amendment 2021) made allergen accuracy a legal duty, and the route most cafés trip up is not the menu itself, it's the substitution. The pesto supplier changes their recipe and adds cashews. The gluten-free bread brand swaps to a bakery that also handles wheat. Nobody tells the front of house team, because nobody looked at the delivery note.

The opening check is: was there an overnight delivery, and if so, has anyone reconciled it against the allergen matrix? Five minutes. It has saved us from at least two near-misses I can think of, including a batch of "vegan" brownies that arrived with butter listed third on the ingredients.

Til, float, and the boring bits

Two people, count the float, sign the sheet. If yesterday's close-down cash doesn't reconcile, you want to know before the morning rush, not at 4pm when three different people have been on the til.

Set the card terminal. Test it with a 1p contactless tap. Print a test receipt to confirm the roll is loaded. We once opened with a terminal that had silently dropped its WiFi overnight and took cash only for two hours, which sounds fine until you realise the loss in covers from people who only carry phones.

Front of house and the human bit

The last ten minutes is the bit customers see. Loos checked and restocked. Specials board written in legible handwriting (not the manager's, the chef's, with prices). Music on at the right volume for 7am, not 7pm. Door open at the advertised time, not five minutes late because someone's still piping cream.

Brief the team. Two minutes. What's 86'd, what the soup is, who's on what station, any allergen flags from the matrix check. People work better when they know what's happening.

The printable template

Here's the bones of what we used at Welsh Back. Print it, laminate it, write on it with a chinagraph pencil, wipe it down at the end of the day. Or photograph the completed sheet daily and file it.

Date: _______ Opener: _______ Time started: _______

1. Previous night close-down sheet verified: Y / N. Issues: _______
2. Walk-in chiller temp: ____°C
3. Milk fridge temp: ____°C
4. Prep fridge temp: ____°C
5. Pastry display temp: ____°C
6. Freezer temp: ____°C
7. Hot hold temp (if in use): ____°C
8. Handwash 1 hot water (30 sec test): Y / N
9. Handwash 2 hot water (30 sec test): Y / N
10. Overnight deliveries: Y / N. Allergen matrix reviewed: Y / N
11. Til float counted and signed: ____ (initial)
12. Card terminal tested: Y / N
13. Loos stocked: Y / N
14. Specials board written: Y / N
15. Team briefed: Y / N

Time finished: _______ Signature: _______

Stick to that and your opening will run to time, and you will have, without doing anything extra, the daily evidence that satisfies most of what an EHO will ask to see.

Common mistakes

• Ticking boxes instead of recording numbers: A tick tells you nothing. A number tells you the chiller is creeping up by 0.5°C a week and needs servicing. Always record the actual reading.
• Letting one person open alone every day: The same person making the same checks develops blind spots. Rotate openers. Different eyes catch different things.
• Filling the sheet in at the end of the day: Tempting, especially after a hard service. But if you do it once, you'll do it always, and the whole document becomes worthless. The whole point is that it's a real-time record.
• Not verifying the close-down: If you don't check yesterday's close, your closers will get sloppy. The verification step is what keeps the night team honest.
• Treating allergen checks as a menu issue only: The substitution risk lives in the delivery note, not the menu. Check the deliveries.
• Making the checklist too long: We had a 47-point checklist once. Nobody used it. Twenty points or fewer, or it becomes wallpaper.