Digital temperature log app for pubs, restaurants and cafés

Every kitchen has the same clipboard. It hangs on a nail by the walk-in, the pen went missing in August, and the Tuesday column is suspiciously neat because somebody filled in the whole week on Sunday. When an environmental health officer asks to see your fridge records, that sheet is either your best friend or your biggest problem.

A digital temperature log app fixes the boring part. Staff take the reading, tap it into a phone, and the record is stored with their name and the time. If a fridge is running warm, you know that morning, not when you flick back through the folder at the end of the month.

Why paper temperature logs let you down

Paper isn't illegal and it isn't useless. The trouble is what it can't do:

• It can't tell you anything is wrong. A 9°C reading written on a sheet sits there quietly until someone reads it.
• It can't prove when it was written. Ten identical entries in the same pen look exactly like what they are.
• It goes missing. Sheets get wet, binned with the delivery notes, or taken home in an apron pocket.
• It lives in one place. If you run two sites, or you're the owner checking in from home, you can't see it.

The rules themselves are simple. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland chilled food must be kept at 8°C or below by law, and the FSA recommends setting fridges to 5°C or below to give yourself a margin. Hot food that isn't being served straight away must be kept at 63°C or above. Scotland's rules work differently; see our guide to fridge temperature rules in the UK. The hard part is proving, day after day, that you kept to them.

What a good temperature log app should do

Before you pick any app, check it does these things:

1. One entry per unit, each with its own range. A bottle fridge, a meat fridge, a chest freezer and a hot cupboard all have different targets. One "fridge temps" box isn't enough.
2. Fast on a phone. If logging takes longer than reading the display, staff will skip it during a rush.
3. Named and timestamped automatically. Nobody should be typing their own initials and the time.
4. Out-of-range readings flagged to a manager. The point of a check is to act on it.
5. A clear history you can show an inspector. Ideally the last week at a glance, and the full record when asked.
6. No hardware lock-in. Sensors have their place, but you shouldn't need to buy kit to start.

How ShiftComplete handles temperature logs

ShiftComplete is an everyday operations and rota app built for UK pubs, restaurants, cafés, bars and hotels. Temperature logging is one part of it, and it works like this.

Set up every unit once

Add each fridge, freezer, hot-hold unit and ambient point (a dry store, a cellar) with its own minimum and maximum. Take a typical pub kitchen with two fridges and a hot cupboard:

The ranges are yours to choose. Many kitchens use 5°C as the upper limit on fridges because it leaves room before the 8°C legal line, and around -18°C is the usual freezer target in FSA and Food Standards Scotland guidance.

Staff log readings in seconds

Whoever is on opening checks picks up their own phone, or the shared tablet behind the bar, opens the temperature log and enters each reading. There's nothing to install: ShiftComplete runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or computer. Every reading is saved with the person's name and the exact time. If you want proof, they can attach a photo of the display.

Breaches are flagged, not buried

When a reading lands outside the range you set, it's flagged on the manager's dashboard. Fridge 2 reading 9°C at 10:05 is something you want to know at 10:06, so you can move the cheesecakes, check the door seal and call the engineer before lunch service.

A rolling seven days ready for the inspector

The temperature log shows a 7-day rolling view, which is usually the first thing an officer wants to see. Behind it sits a full audit log you can export as CSV, and a weekly report that counts temperature breaches alongside task completion, incidents and maintenance.

More than a temperature log

Temperature checks rarely live on their own. The same app holds:

• Opening, closing and cleaning checklists that change by weekday, with every tick named and timestamped and optional or required photos. A 2am close still counts as "today".
• Allergen information for every menu item against the 14 UK allergens, searchable by front-of-house staff.
• Incidents and maintenance, logged with a photo, severity and status, so the broken fridge seal becomes a job someone owns.
• Rotas, so the person on opening checks is the person who was actually rota'd on.

If you're following a Safer Food, Better Business pack, our guide to keeping SFBB records digitally covers how the two fit together.

What Kirkham Hospitality found

Graeme Kirkham runs The Lounge in Oswestry and Knock & Snitch. His take after moving the venues over:

"The rota stopped being a Sunday-night argument the week we switched over. The chef stopped being the only person who knows what's in the kitchen. And the EHO turn up to a screen, not a box file." Graeme Kirkham, Owner, The Lounge Oswestry & Knock & Snitch

Read the full Kirkham story.

Pricing and free trial

ShiftComplete costs £1.49 per staff member per month, with every feature included: temperature logs, checklists, allergens, rotas, incidents, reports and multi-site. There's no per-site fee and no contract, and you can remove staff at any time. Over 100 staff, talk to us.

You can try it free for 60 days with no card. Setting up your units takes about five minutes, and if you'd rather be walked through it there's a free 15-minute set-up call with the team. See pricing for the detail.

Who it's for

• Pubs serving food with a couple of fridges, a freezer and a hot cupboard, where checks are split between bar and kitchen staff.
• Cafés with a chilled display counter and a small team who all take turns opening up.
• Restaurants that want the head chef to see breaches without being the only person who checks.
• Hotels and small groups who want one view across several kitchens and bars.

A reminder on responsibility: ShiftComplete helps you keep the records an EHO asks to see. It isn't approved or endorsed by the FSA or any local authority, and keeping food at safe temperatures remains the operator's job. The app makes it much harder for a warm fridge to go unnoticed.