Receiving Temperatures: What to Check When Food Arrives

Check the temperature of every potentially hazardous delivery before you accept it. Chilled food should arrive at 5°C or colder, frozen food frozen hard (ideally around -18°C), and hot food at 60°C or hotter. Probe between packages or verify the driver's readout, record the reading, and reject anything sitting in the 5-60°C danger zone unless the supplier can prove it stayed safe. Key takeaways: Check the temperature of every potentially hazardous delivery before you sign for it — receiving is your first food safety control point.. Chilled food should be 5°C or colder, frozen food frozen solid, and hot food 60°C or hotter on arrival.. Anything in the 5-60°C danger zone should be rejected unless the supplier can prove, with reliable records, that it stayed safe under the 2-hour/4-hour rule.. Record the reading, time, supplier and accept/reject decision for every delivery — it is your evidence of due diligence and it reveals problem suppliers.. Sanitise and calibrate your probe, and move accepted cold and frozen stock into storage straight away.. Why receiving is a critical control point Deliveries are the first point where food safety can slip inside your business. Between the supplier's cold room and your fridge, food can sit on warm loading docks, in delivery vans, and in queues. If a chilled load arrives warm, you inherit that risk — and once you have signed for it and stored it, the responsibility for its safety becomes yours. Standard 3.2.2 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code requires food businesses to take all practicable measures to receive food only when it is safe and suitable. Temperature is the clearest, fastest evidence of that. A quick probe at the dock tells you whether the cold chain held all the way to your door. Because it takes seconds and protects every customer downstream, a temperature check on arrival is one of the highest-value controls you can run. It also gives you a documented, defensible reason to accept a delivery — or to turn it away. The temperature limits to check against Potentially hazardous foods must be kept out of the temperature danger zone of 5-60°C, where food-poisoning bacteria multiply quickly. That gives you three simple targets at receiving: chilled food at or below 5°C, frozen food frozen hard, and hot food at or above 60°C. The Code does allow food to be transported at other temperatures if the business can demonstrate it stays safe — for example, using the 2-hour/4-hour rule, which limits how long ready-to-eat food can spend between 5°C and 60°C. But the simplest and most defensible position at goods-in is the plain one: cold 5°C or below, hot 60°C or above, frozen solid. Treat 5°C as the outer limit, not a target. Many suppliers deliver chilled stock at 3-4°C, which gives you headroom. A reading that creeps to 6°C or 7°C is a signal that the cold chain is under strain, even if the food is not yet unsafe. How to probe a delivery correctly A reading is only as good as the way you take it. Start with a clean, sanitised probe and check that it is reading accurately — an ice slurry should read close to 0°C. A probe that has drifted, or that has just touched raw meat, will give you a number you cannot trust. For chilled and frozen loads, take a non-destructive reading first by sliding the probe tip between two packages. This gives a fast surface temperature without piercing packaging. If that reading is borderline, probe the core of a single sacrificial pack — insert the tip into the thickest part and wait for the reading to stabilise before you record it. Always sanitise the probe before and after each delivery, and between different foods, to avoid carrying bacteria from one product to another. If you rely on the driver's own temperature display, treat it as a starting point and verify it with your own probe rather than accepting it on faith. What to record and why Keep the record simple but consistent. For each delivery, log the date and time, the supplier or vehicle, the food or category, the temperature reading, and the accept-or-reject decision along with the name of the person who checked it. This record does two jobs. First, it demonstrates due diligence: if an authorised officer asks how you know your incoming food is safe, a legible receiving log answers the question. Second, it reveals patterns you can act on — a supplier who repeatedly arrives at 7-8°C is a problem you can raise with evidence rather than a hunch. A printed receiving sheet clipped at the dock and a digital log both work. What matters is that the checks actually happen, the readings are legible, and a manager reviews the records regularly rather than filing them unread. When to reject a delivery Reject rather than rationalise. Chilled potentially hazardous food above 5°C should be refused unless the supplier can justify it with reliable time and temperature evidence under the 2-hour/4-hour rule. Hot food below 60°C should be refused for the same reason. For frozen food, reject anything showing signs of thawing and refreezing: soft packs, large ice crystals inside the packaging, water-stained cartons, or products frozen into misshapen clumps. Also reject stock that is damaged, leaking, swollen, past its use-by date, or shows any sign of pests. Chilled food reading above 5°C with no supporting time/temperature evidence. Hot food reading below 60°C. Frozen food that is soft, water-stained, or shows large ice crystals. Packaging that is damaged, leaking, swollen, or pest-affected. Stock that is past its use-by date. Frozen and hot deliveries: special checks Frozen food should be frozen solid, full stop. Jabbing a standard probe into frozen product can damage the tip and will not give you a true core temperature, so rely mainly on a between-pack surface reading plus visual checks. Ice crystals inside the packaging, pooled or refrozen water, and misshapen products all point to thawing somewhere in transit. Hot deliveries are less common but demand the same discipline. Probe the centre of the thickest item and confirm it is 60°C or above. If it has dropped below 60°C, you can only accept it by applying the 2-hour/4-hour rule, and only if you have reliable information about how long it has been out of temperature control. In both cases, look at the vehicle too. A working refrigeration unit, a clean load space, and intact packaging are part of the picture. A warm reading combined with a broken chiller unit is a clear reject. Build receiving into a routine Receiving fails when it is an afterthought squeezed between other jobs. Make it a defined task: schedule deliveries for times when a trained staff member is available to check them, and keep a sanitised, calibrated probe at the dock so there is never an excuse to skip the check. Give staff a clear, simple rule — cold 5°C or below, hot 60°C or above, frozen solid, and reject anything else unless a manager approves it with evidence. New team members should learn the process during induction, not by watching someone cut corners. Finally, move accepted chilled and frozen stock into storage immediately. A perfect arrival temperature is quickly undone by a pallet left on a warm dock while the paperwork is sorted. The check and the put-away are two halves of the same job. Checklist: Probe cleaned, sanitised, and calibration current. Chilled food reads 5°C or colder. Frozen food is frozen solid with no signs of thawing. Hot food reads 60°C or hotter. Packaging intact, within use-by, and free of pests. Reading, time, supplier, and decision recorded. Accepted cold and frozen stock moved to storage straight away. Common mistakes: Signing the delivery docket without probing the food. Trusting only the driver's display instead of verifying with your own probe. Failing to sanitise the probe between deliveries, risking cross-contamination. Accepting borderline chilled stock 'just this once' to keep a supplier happy. Leaving accepted cold or frozen stock on the dock while paperwork is sorted. Keeping no record, so there is no evidence of due diligence and no way to spot problem suppliers.