Restaurant food safety recordkeeping for the Friday-night line and the Monday audit.

01What you get

A tablet-first food-safety system that runs on the line and exports the binder the inspector wants.

If you run a restaurant — one location or twenty — here is what HACCPlan does for you:

• Replaces the clipboard. Temperature, cooking, cooling, hot-hold, dishwasher, and cleaning logs all live on a tablet at the station. Entries are time-stamped. Back-dating is blocked.
• Catches the failure at hour three, not at the next inspection. If a walk-in misses two temp checks in 48 hours, your manager gets a text. If a 6-quart batch of chili hasn't logged its cooling step, the chef on duty gets paged.
• Builds your HACCP plan in an evening. A wizard walks you through the seven Codex principles for your specific menu. FDA Food Code 2022 thresholds are pre-loaded. You get a real plan, not a template.
• Maps every menu item to the Big 9 allergens. Cross-contact flags (shared fryer, shared boards, shared sauces) raised against your recipes. Exports printed-menu, digital-menu, and QR-code formats — the three California's ADDE Act will require starting July 1, 2026.
• Tracks every CFPM and food-handler card with renewal alerts at 60, 30, and 7 days. So no card lapses without you knowing.
• One-tap inspection-day binder. Last 30 days of logs, the HACCP plan, the employee illness records, the cert tracker — all generated in the order an inspector typically pulls them.

Free tier: HACCP builder outputs, Big 6 illness policy materials with FDA Form 1-A, and core temperature log templates you can print or download. Plan Keeper saves the editable workspace when the work needs to live past the first output.

Free templates right now, no signup: all 10 logs above as printable PDFs. Browse the templates →

02What you avoid

The five things that get restaurants cited — and how each one disappears.

The CDC tracks contributing factors for every restaurant outbreak. The same five buckets show up every year. Most restaurant inspections are checking for these and nothing exotic.

1. 01

   Temperature problems (the #1 cited family)

   Cold-line drifting above 41°F. Hot-line below 135°F. Chili still at 90°F four hours after the lunch rush. A brisket reheated to "warm" instead of 165°F in under two hours.

   What HACCPlan does today: manual temperature and cooling records keep the check tied to a time, person, product, and corrective action. Bluetooth probe capture, IoT sensors, SMS alerts, and real-time exception dashboards are coming soon.

2. 02

   Cross-contamination

   Raw chicken on the shelf above bagged spinach. Cutting board used for raw beef then tomato slicing. Gloves changed once an hour instead of between tasks.

   What HACCPlan does: the cleaning log forces a sanitizer-concentration entry on every shift change. The SOP push delivers brand-standard prep-area diagrams to every location.

3. 03

   Sick workers on the line

   A cook with vomiting symptoms still working the cold station. No written health policy on file. No record the manager checked.

   What HACCPlan does: keep illness-policy materials and employee records organized with the rest of the food-safety binder. More structured shift-open illness checks and return-to-work workflows should stay roadmap until implemented.

4. 04

   Allergen mismanagement

   Shared fryer oil between battered shrimp and french fries. Pesto with pine nuts swapped into a staff meal. A new menu item with sesame oil never added to the allergen matrix.

   What HACCPlan does today: keep allergen procedures and related records with the HACCP workspace. Recipe-driven allergen matrices and menu exports are valuable roadmap features and should not be described as live until shipped.

5. 05

   Handwashing and personal hygiene

   Handwash sink blocked by a stack of bus tubs. No soap. No warm water. Gloves used instead of handwashing.

   What HACCPlan does: the daily zone cleaning log includes a handwash-sink check. Photo capture for verification. Inspector's most-cited single violation is the handwash sink — this is the cheapest fix on the page.

03The rules

The Food Code sections every restaurant operator should know.

Quick context. Restaurants are regulated as retail food establishments. The rulebook is the FDA Food Code as adopted by your state — not FSMA (the federal food-modernization act, which exempts retail under 21 CFR §117.5(g)). Most states use the 2017 or 2022 edition. Your local health department is the enforcer. The FDA publishes a State Adoption Tracker — look up your state before you build a checklist.

Six sections drive most inspections. Memorize these.

Three more that get cited often: §5-205.11 (dedicated handwash sink, accessible always, used for nothing else), §3-501.17 (date marking — refrigerated ready-to-eat food held more than 24 hours marked, max 7 days at 41°F or below), and §3-501.19 (Time as a Public Health Control — written procedures permitting up to 4 hours at any temperature, useful for buffets and sushi rolling).

Two acronyms you will see repeatedly: TCS is Time/temperature Control for Safety — the foods (meat, dairy, cooked starches, cut leafy greens, cut tomatoes, cut melons, sprouts, garlic-in-oil) where time and temperature are the primary controls. PIC is Person In Charge — the manager on duty.

04The deadline

July 1, 2026 — California's ADDE Act, the first menu-allergen law in the U.S.

If you operate under 20 locations, ADDE does not apply to you yet. But §3-602.12(C) already requires written allergen information on request anywhere the 2022 Food Code is adopted. A live allergen matrix is the cleanest way to do that without depending on a line cook to remember the difference between sesame oil and tahini.

05Multi-location

The dashboard a director of operations actually uses.

A 5-unit chain has roughly five times the failure surface but rarely five times the food-safety staff. The director of operations at a 20-store fast-casual cannot personally verify that Store 7's walk-in was logged at 8 AM Tuesday. She infers it from inspection scores (lagging 30 to 90 days), from field consultant reports (one store at a time, monthly), and from internal QA audits (also lagging). The problem is not policy. The problem is visibility.

A real-time dashboard turns compliance from inference into observation:

1. 01

   Per-location compliance score, updated daily

   Logs completed vs logs required, open critical violations, training overdue, and certificate expiries are useful dashboard targets. The current launch app should describe this as planned unless the dashboard is live for restaurant operators.

2. 02

   Exception alerts that page the right person

   Walk-in temperature alerts and cooling-log escalation are important, but text paging and exception routing should be treated as coming soon until notification delivery is implemented.

3. 03

   Brand-standard SOPs pushed from corporate

   Corporate publishes one HACCP plan, one allergen matrix, one opening checklist, one closing checklist. Every location inherits it. Local variations route through corporate so the master record stays clean.

4. 04

   Audit-trail integrity by default

   Logs should be time-stamped and attributable. Immutable audit-trail claims should wait until the app has a dedicated audit-log implementation.

5. 05

   CFPM and food-handler card tracker per location

   A 20-store chain has roughly 40 to 60 CFPMs and 500 to 800 food-handler cards. Renewal alerts at 60, 30, and 7 days. Failure mode without tracking: someone's card lapses, the inspector finds it, the store gets cited.

“

I have 12 locations. My field consultants spend six hours a week driving between stores to check that the temp logs are actually being filled out. Half the time they are filled out at 4 PM for the whole day. We need to see this in real time.

”

Composite — director of operations, regional fast-casual

This usually doesn't get solved at SME prices. The platforms with strong multi-location dashboards (SafetyChain, Crisp) are built for 500-store chains with corporate food-safety teams. The platforms priced for 3-to-20-unit operators (Jolt, FreshCheq, FoodDocs) treat multi-location as an add-on. HACCPlan's multi-tenancy was built from day one for facilities that produce under multiple brand names — same data model, different label. That adapts cleanly to multi-concept and multi-location restaurants without per-location pricing at the lower tiers.

06Inside the build

What every restaurant gets in the box.

Eight features. Each one exists because a real restaurant operator asked for it.

1. 01

   Tablet-first floor UI

   The launch app is mobile-friendly and supports core record entry in the browser. Voice entry, photo capture for every record type, and offline sync are coming soon.

2. 02

   Bluetooth probe integration

   Bluetooth probe capture is coming soon. Launch users should enter temperatures manually and keep paper backups during rollout.

3. 03

   IoT temperature sensors for ambient equipment

   IoT temperature sensors are roadmap work. Manual logs remain the launch workflow for ambient equipment, cooking, cooling, hot holding, and cold holding.

4. 04

   Big 6 illness log with FDA Form 1-A

   Form 1-A signed by every food employee at onboarding, stored against the employee record. Daily verbal check digitized. Exclusion and restriction decisions logged with the reason and the return-to-work date. Two taps to retrieve for the inspector.

5. 05

   Per-item allergen matrix, ADDE-ready

   Add allergen procedures and supporting records to the workspace today. Recipe-level Big 9 mapping and menu disclosure exports are coming soon.

6. 06

   CFPM and food-handler card tracker

   One record per employee with role, location, certification type, issue date, expiry, renewal status. Bulk procurement workflow (some operators batch their food-handler enrollment through one accredited provider). Manager-on-duty proof at any point in the last 12 months on demand.

7. 07

   Inspection-day binder, one tap

   HACCP plan, recent logs, employee records, certificate tracker, cleaning schedule, pest records, water tests, and training records can be organized for inspector handoff. Exact jurisdiction ordering is roadmap work.

8. 08

   Multi-location dashboard

   Multi-location dashboards, exception alerts, brand-standard SOP push, and corporate rollups are coming soon.

07Get started free

Start with the templates. Add the software when you're ready.

If you are not ready to commit to software, start with the 10 logs that get cited most often. Each is a printable PDF you can use on a tablet or print to a clipboard. No account, no email gate.

Most restaurants run on the free templates for a few weeks before deciding if the software fits. That is the right order — get the logs filled out reliably on paper first.

0830-day onboarding

What the first month on HACCPlan looks like.

A realistic onboarding for a single-location restaurant:

1. 01

   Days 1-3 — set up the basics

   Create the location. Add the manager and CFPM details. Upload your existing HACCP plan or generate a starter from the built-in template. Import the current menu. Sign FDA Form 1-A for the manager-on-duty.

2. 02

   Days 4-10 — load the team

   Add every food employee. Assign roles. Attach food-handler cards with expiry dates. Sign Form 1-A. Set up exception-alert routing (which manager gets paged for what).

3. 03

   Days 11-20 — go live on the logs

   Switch temperature, cooking, cooling, hot/cold, dishwasher, and cleaning logs from paper to the browser app. Keep paper backups for the transition month.

4. 04

   Days 21-30 — build the allergen matrix

   Map every menu item to the Big 9. Flag cross-contact (shared fryer oil, shared boards). If you have a California location and 20+ stores nationally, this is where ADDE prep starts. Generate the printed and digital disclosure formats in parallel so the next menu print run is clean.

By day 30, run the inspection-day binder export against a real practice run. Hand it to the GM and have her pretend to be the inspector. If she can find the cooling log for last Tuesday's chili in under 30 seconds, the system is working. If not, that's what month two cleans up.

Start free

Generate restaurant HACCP outputs — free, no card

Free gives you HACCP builder outputs, Big 6 illness policy materials with Form 1-A, and core temperature logs without a saved editable workspace. Saved workspaces keep drafts, AI workflow, and records together. Multi-location dashboards, IoT probes, and ADDE-ready allergen exports are coming soon.

Email required to save your plan. No credit card.

Footnotes

1.FDA Food Code 2022 — full PDF — fda.gov

2.FDA Food Code — State Adoption Tracker — fda.gov

3.FDA Food Code 2022 — Summary of Changes (sesame, written allergen disclosure §3-602.12(C)) — fda.gov

4.21 CFR §117.5(g) — FSMA preventive controls retail exemption — ecfr.gov

5.CDC MMWR — Contributing Factors of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks (NORS 2014–2022) — cdc.gov

6.FDA Form 1-A — Conditional Employee / Food Employee Reporting Agreement — fda.gov

7.California SB 68 (ADDE Act) — effective July 1, 2026 — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

8.National Restaurant Association — 2026 State of the Industry — restaurant.org

Andrew Langevin·CFIA-licensed facility, Brantford ON· Published 2026-06-04· 12 min read· Wikidata Q139112497