Café opening and closing checklists your staff will actually follow

Most cafés have an opening and closing checklist. Most of them are a laminated sheet that was accurate two menus ago, and nobody can say whether it was followed last Tuesday. A checklist only works if it’s short enough to finish, specific enough to check, and leaves a record.

Keep it to the jobs that matter

If your list has forty lines, people will tick all forty in one go at the end. Aim for ten to fifteen items per shift. Anything that isn’t done every single day belongs on a weekly or monthly list instead.

A starting point for opening

• Prepare the espresso machine and grinder using their operating instructions
• Dial in the grinder and pull a test shot
• Check and record fridge temperatures
• Check use-by dates on milk and chilled food, rotate stock
• Set out the day’s bakes and check that the current allergen information is available
• Float the till
• Clean and set out tables, check the toilets
• Unlock the door and put out the A-board

A starting point for closing

• Backflush the espresso machine and clean the group heads and steam wands
• Store beans and clean the grinder as instructed for your equipment
• Store, label and date retained food according to your food safety plan
• Record fridge temperatures
• Clean surfaces, sweep and mop
• Cash up and record the till
• Take out the bins and recycling
• Secure the premises and shut down only the equipment your closing procedure specifies; keep refrigeration running

Adapt both to your shop. A café serving hot food will have cooking and cooling checks; a bar will have glass-washer and cellar jobs.

Write each item so it can be checked

“Clean the coffee area” means something different to every person on the rota. “Wipe and dry the steam wands, empty the knock box, wipe the counter” doesn’t. If you can’t tell by looking whether it was done, rewrite it.

Worked example: turn “check the fridge” into a usable record

Instead of a single tick, write: “Record the milk fridge reading using our agreed method. Compare it with the limits in our food safety plan. Record and escalate any exception before marking the task resolved.” Your blank record could use these fields:

• Task and asset: opening check, milk fridge
• Evidence: date, time, actual reading and staff initials
• Reference: the shop’s current food safety plan and corrective-action instructions
• If outside the agreed limit: action taken, person notified and outcome

A completed check can reveal a problem. Keep the problem open for handover until someone records the outcome; a tick alone does not show that the fridge or its contents are safe.

Ask for a photo on the jobs you care about most

You don’t need a photo of every line. But for the two or three things that cause real problems when they’re skipped, such as the fridge temperature reading or the locked back door, a photo removes the guesswork and the awkward conversation the next morning.

Keep food safety records where you can find them

Keep the records required by your food safety procedures. Many small cafés in England and Wales use the Food Standards Agency’s Safer Food, Better Business pack. Daily checks like fridge temperatures fit naturally into an opening and closing checklist, so the record builds up as part of the routine rather than as a separate chore.

This starter checklist is an operations template. Review it against your own food safety plan, equipment instructions and applicable local guidance before putting it into use.

How Unpickle handles it

In Unpickle, opening and closing lists are repeating jobs that appear every day without anyone setting them up again. Staff tick items off on a phone or a shared tablet, you can require a photo on any item, and anything not finished by the end of the day is marked as missed, so you can see which jobs slip and when.

Explore digital opening and closing checklists for daily jobs, or use the staff training guide to write the instructions behind each check.

Set up your first checklist free and see it on your phone in a few minutes.