How Culinary Key Is Structured
Culinary Key organises everything into two levels. Getting this straight early saves a lot of hunting later.
Locations and Areas
A Location is one physical premises — a restaurant, café, bakery or unit at a single address.
An Area is a part of that premises that keeps its own day-to-day records. When you create a Location, Culinary Key automatically provisions two Areas for you: Front and Back. Front covers front-of-house, Back covers the kitchen.
That split exists because the two halves of a site genuinely run differently. The kitchen probes food and records fridge temperatures; front-of-house cleans the bar and checks the customer toilets. Keeping their records apart means each team sees its own work rather than scrolling past someone else's.
Which Level Am I Working At?
This is the part worth remembering.
Kept per Area — the daily running records:
- Opening, cleaning and closing checklists
- Probe checks and temperature records
- Waste, deliveries and maintenance
- Accidents, pest control and the address book
Kept per Location — the things that describe the whole premises:
- Health & Safety
- Inspection records
- Monthly review
- Manager checklist
Kept for the whole business — the reference information that does not change between kitchens:
- Allergens
- Safe methods
- COSHH
So if you record a fridge temperature, it belongs to the kitchen. If you log an EHO visit, it belongs to the premises — the inspector did not visit only the kitchen. And if you write a safe method for cooling stock, every site gets it, because the method does not change depending on which kitchen is following it.
If a record is missing, check which Area you have selected before anything else. Nine times out of ten it was entered against the other one.
Switching Between Them
The tab strip near the top of each page shows the Location you are in and the Areas inside it. Selecting a different Area changes which records you are looking at; it does not move or copy anything.
Your selection is remembered between visits, so if you always work in the kitchen you will land there each time.
More Than One Site
If you run several premises, each one is its own Location with its own Front and Back. Nothing is shared between them by default — separate checklists, separate staff, separate records — which is what keeps each site's compliance history straight if an inspector only asks about one of them.
Why This Matters at Inspection
An inspector asks about a specific premises on a specific date. Because records are held against the Location and Area they were actually recorded in, you can answer that question directly instead of filtering a single pile of records for the right site. The structure is doing the filing for you.