Practical guides for UK food businesses — how to run daily checks, keep the registers an inspector asks for, and prove compliance. Written for kitchens using Culinary Key, and useful to any kitchen keeping records.
28 guides across 4 series. Start at the top, or take the series you need.
Set up your account, Locations and team.
7 guidesA short orientation to Culinary Key — what it does, where everything lives, and what to do first.
Almost every question about where a record "went" comes down to one thing: Culinary Key keeps some records for a whole premises and others for a single area wit
A Location in Culinary Key is more than a name — it’s the single source of truth for one physical location. Set it up properly and every checklist, staff assignment
Culinary Key keeps two separate lists of people: the staff who appear on your records, and the people who can log in. They are not the same list, and mixing the
Culinary Key has five kinds of access, and each one exists for a different reason. Choosing the right one is mostly about deciding how much of the business some
Your checklists should describe what your kitchen actually does, not a generic template. This is the setup step that most decides whether your team uses the sys
Culinary Key bills by the number of Locations you choose to pay for. Nothing you do inside the app changes your bill on its own — that is deliberate.
The checks your team runs every shift.
6 guidesThis resource explains how daily operations work in Culinary Key and why completing daily checklists is essential for food safety, consistency, and legal compli
Keep Your Kitchen Running Smoothly Managing your operational checklists ensures your team follows food safety protocols consistently, tracks compliance, and st
Keep Food Safe with Every Probe Check! Every degree matters when it comes to food safety. A quick probe check can prevent foodborne illness, protect your cus
Temperature records are the evidence an inspector is most likely to ask for, and the ones most likely to be incomplete. Culinary Key records each unit twice a d
Checking a delivery is the last point at which a supplier's problem is still the supplier's problem. Once it goes into your fridge unrecorded, it becomes yours.
Waste recording is the one daily record that usually pays for itself. It is kept for food safety reasons, but what it mostly reveals is money going in the bin o
Safety and compliance records you keep on file.
7 guidesAllergen information is the one record where being roughly right is not good enough. This is also the only register shared across your whole business rather tha
Safe Methods are where you write down how your kitchen keeps food safe. They are the documented backbone an inspector asks to see, and the thing a new starter s
COSHH covers every chemical in the building — the degreaser, the sanitiser, the descaler under the sink. It is a legal requirement, and it is the register most
Record accidents when they happen, not when they turn out to matter. You cannot tell at the time which cut becomes an infection and which slip becomes a claim e
Evidence of pests is one of the fastest routes to a closed kitchen. A pest control record shows you are looking — which is what an inspector wants to see as muc
Two small tools that mostly earn their keep on a bad day — when a fridge fails at six on a Friday and you need both the fault history and the engineer's number
Daily cleaning takes care of itself on the daily checklist. Scheduled cleaning is for the jobs that come round every few weeks — the ones that get forgotten pre
Reviewing, auditing and proving compliance.
8 guidesFire alarms, extinguishers, emergency lighting and gas safety run on their own intervals — monthly, six-monthly, annual — and each one is a legal obligation in
Daily records tell you about today. The monthly review is where you step back and look at the month — which is the only altitude from which a slow drift is visi
The Audit Tool is where every record you have kept becomes something you can actually read — completion rates, gaps, and a PDF you can hand to somebody.
In food safety, an audit is not a single event. It is the result of what you record day to day. In Culinary Key, the Audit area brings all of that evidence
When an inspector visits, what they found and what you did about it becomes part of your permanent history. This is where that history lives.
The daily checklists record that the work was done. The manager checklist records that somebody checked — which is a different job, and the one an inspector is
Two tools for looking across the whole business rather than at one site: a report that tells you how every Location is doing, and bulletins that tell your team
An EHO visit is usually unannounced, which means preparation is not something you do the week before. It is what your records already look like on an ordinary T
