Fridge temperature rules for UK food businesses

The short answer

That's it for the headline. The rest of this guide is the detail that matters when you're stood in front of a fridge reading 7°C at 11am on a Saturday.

The 8°C rule in England, Wales and Northern Ireland

The legal limit applies to food, not to the fridge setting. In England it sits in Schedule 4 of the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013: keeping food that could support the growth of harmful bacteria or toxins above 8°C on food premises is an offence. Wales and Northern Ireland have equivalent rules, and the FSA's guidance for all three nations puts it plainly: chilled food must be kept at 8°C or below.

The foods this covers are the ones you'd expect:

• anything with a use-by date
• cooked dishes, such as a tray of braised beef or a batch of chilli
• ready-to-eat food like prepared salads, sandwiches, cheesecakes and other desserts
• raw meat, fish and dairy that the supplier says to keep chilled

Some foods don't need chilling for safety (a whole uncut hard cheese for flavour, for example, or a sealed jar of pickles before opening), but if you're not sure, keep it cold and follow the manufacturer's storage instructions. Some products must be kept colder than 8°C, and the label will tell you.

Why the FSA says 5°C

A fridge set to 8°C will regularly have food warmer than 8°C in it. Every time the door opens during service, warm air rushes in, and a fridge packed tight with a fresh delivery takes time to pull back down. Setting it to 5°C or below gives you room for all of that and still keeps the food under the legal line. Food Standards Scotland's CookSafe makes the same point for Scottish businesses.

How Scotland is different

Scotland's temperature rules come from the Food Hygiene (Scotland) Regulations 2006, and they're worded differently. Food Standards Scotland's own guidance on temperature control legislation sets out the main differences:

• No exact chill temperature in law. Food that needs chilling must be kept in a refrigerator, a refrigerated chamber or a cool ventilated place.
• No fixed tolerance periods. The "four hours out of the fridge" rule in England, Wales and Northern Ireland doesn't exist in Scottish law.
• Guidance still uses numbers. CookSafe says 8°C or below controls most bacteria in perishable food and recommends operating fridges at 5°C or below. If your storage runs above 8°C, the guidance says the food's shelf life may need to be shorter.

In practice, a Scottish kitchen working to CookSafe ends up with the same targets as one in England. The difference is in how a breach is judged, so don't rely on English tolerance periods if you're north of the border.

The four-hour display rule (England, Wales and NI)

If you display cold food out of chilled storage, such as a buffet at a function or sandwiches on a counter, there's a tolerance:

• You can keep chilled food out of the fridge for up to four hours, once.
• If it's been out less than four hours, it can go back in the fridge and be kept at 8°C or below until it's used.
• If it's been out more than four hours, it must be thrown away.

SFBB's practical tip is to write the time food came out of the fridge on a label or in the diary, put out small amounts, and finish what's on display before topping it up.

Freezer temperatures

There's no single legal freezer temperature for caterers in the same way there's an 8°C chill limit, but the guidance figure is consistent: -18°C or below. CookSafe says freezing at -18°C or below stops bacteria multiplying, and FSA guidance says freezers should be around -18°C. Freezing doesn't kill bacteria; it pauses them, which is why defrosting matters as much as freezing.

Good freezer habits from the FSA's business guidance:

• put frozen deliveries in the freezer straight away
• freeze fresh food before its use-by date and note the date you froze it
• portion food before freezing and label everything
• cool cooked dishes before they go in
• defrost in the fridge, not on the side; food defrosting between 8°C and 63°C lets bacteria grow

How often to check, and how

The FSA's Safer Food, Better Business pack says to check fridges and chilled display equipment at least once a day, starting with your opening checks. CookSafe recommends checking at the start of the working day and at another point later on.

A sensible routine for a 6-person café with a drinks fridge, a kitchen fridge, a chilled display counter and a freezer:

Display reading or probe?

The digital display on the front of a fridge tells you the air temperature where its sensor sits, which might not be where your food is. SFBB says you can use the display or a dial, but you should regularly check it's accurate with a fridge thermometer or a probe between packs of food. Probing between two packs gives you a reading close to the food without piercing anything.

Check your probe too. The SFBB method: in iced water it should read between -1°C and 1°C, and in boiling water between 99°C and 101°C. If it's outside that, replace it or send it back for calibration. Do it monthly if the manufacturer doesn't say otherwise.

What to do when a fridge is out of range

A warm reading isn't automatically a disaster. What matters is what you do next, and that you write it down.

1. Re-check. Was the door just opened? Was a delivery just loaded? Wait 15 to 20 minutes and take another reading, ideally with a probe between packs.
2. Find out how long. If the last good reading was this morning, you're in a very different place from "nobody's checked since Friday".
3. Move the food. Get high-risk food into another fridge or a cold area. If you can't, or you don't know how long the fridge has been warm, SFBB says to contact your local council's environmental health team for advice.
4. Throw away what you can't vouch for. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, chilled food that hasn't been kept chilled for more than four hours should go.
5. Fix the cause. Door seal, blocked vents, overloading, a fridge next to the fryer, or a unit on its way out. Domestic fridges often can't cope with a commercial kitchen; SFBB suggests commercial equipment if you have frequent problems.
6. Record it. What the reading was, what you did, who did it, and when.

Common causes we see in pubs

• A bottle fridge doubling as a food fridge at a busy bar, door open every 30 seconds.
• The kitchen fridge packed solid after the Friday delivery, so air can't circulate.
• Fridges in a cellar corridor next to a hot boiler.
• Seals split at the hinge side and nobody noticed because the door still "shuts".

A practical checklist

• Every fridge, freezer and display unit listed, with a target range written down
• Fridges set to 5°C or below
• Freezers at -18°C or below
• Readings taken at least daily, starting at opening
• Display readings cross-checked with a probe regularly
• Probe checked in iced and boiling water monthly
• Clear instructions on what to do if a reading is high
• Every breach recorded with the action taken

Keeping the records without the clipboard

ShiftComplete lets you set up each fridge, freezer, hot-hold and ambient point with its own minimum and maximum. Staff log readings on their phone or a tablet behind the bar, every entry is named and timestamped, an optional photo can go with it, and anything outside its range is flagged on the manager's dashboard. The 7-day rolling view is ready when an EHO asks. It helps you keep the records an inspector expects to see; keeping the food cold is still down to you. More on how it works on our digital temperature log app page.