Restaurant Checklist App: Daily Checks Your Team Will Actually Do
A restaurant checklist app replaces the clipboard with daily opening, closing and cleaning checks on staff phones or a shared tablet, with each tick named and timestamped. ShiftComplete does this for UK restaurants, pubs, cafés and hotels, with checks that change by weekday, optional photo evidence and a manager dashboard, for £1.49 per staff member per month.
On this page
The clipboard by the pass works until it doesn't. The pen goes missing, someone ticks the whole week on a Sunday, and when the EHO asks who checked the walk-in on Thursday, nobody knows. A restaurant checklist app fixes the boring parts of this: the list is always there, every tick has a name and a time, and you can see what's been missed from your phone at home.
What goes wrong with paper checklists
Every restaurant manager knows the pattern.
- Ticked in bulk. A sheet that's blank on Wednesday and fully ticked by Friday wasn't done properly. You can't tell which checks were real.
- No names. A tick doesn't say who did it, so you can't thank the person who's reliable or have a word with the one who isn't.
- Same list every day. The Monday deep clean and the Saturday extra prep end up on the daily sheet "if needed", and get ignored the other six days.
- Lost when you need them. The sheet from three weeks ago is in a box file, in the office, under the menus.
- Late closes confuse the date. Close at half one in the morning, and the paper log puts tonight's close on tomorrow's page.
What a good checklist app does
Look for five things:
- Checks on the phone or a shared tablet, with nothing to install.
- Lists that differ by weekday, so each day's list stays short.
- Named, timestamped ticks, automatically.
- Photo evidence where it matters: a clean fryer, a cleared fire exit, a delivery label.
- A manager view that shows what's done and what's missing right now, plus a history you can show an inspector.
How ShiftComplete runs your daily checks
ShiftComplete is the everyday operations and team-scheduling app for UK pubs, restaurants, cafés, bars and hotels. The checklists sit inside a daily routine the whole team sees.
Opening, closing, cleaning and due-diligence checks
Build your lists by area and time: kitchen open, front of house open, close, mid-service, end-of-week clean. Each check can be set for the days it applies, so Tuesday's oven descale or Sunday's post-roast deep clean only appears when it should.
Named, timestamped and with photos when you want them
Every tick records who did it and when. For the checks you care most about, make a photo optional or required. "Walk-in floor clear", "Sanitiser made up", "Bins out and lids closed" are good candidates. A close finished at 2am still counts as today, so the morning team isn't looking at a false gap.
One-off priority tasks
Not everything is routine. Add a one-off task ("Call the dishwasher engineer", "Brief new KP on allergens") and it sits at the top of today's list until someone ticks it off.
Temperatures, allergens and incidents in the same place
The same app holds your fridge, freezer and hot-hold temperature logs, with each unit's own min and max range and out-of-range readings flagged on the dashboard. Your menu is mapped to the 14 UK allergens and front-of-house staff can search it from the floor. Spills, injuries and broken kit can be logged as incidents or maintenance jobs with a photo, severity and status. See digital temperature logs and our allergen app for restaurants.
Reports for you and your inspector
A weekly rollup shows task completion percentage, temperature breaches, incidents and the maintenance backlog. Everything is in a full audit log with CSV export, and the 7-day temperature view is ready when the EHO walks in. ShiftComplete helps you keep the records an EHO asks to see; it doesn't replace your food safety management system. If you use the FSA's Safer Food, Better Business pack, see running SFBB digitally.
What a restaurant day looks like in the app
| Time | List | Example checks |
|---|---|---|
| 9.30am | Kitchen open | Fridge and freezer temps, probe checked, deliveries in, hand basins stocked |
| 11.30am | Front of house open | Tables set, toilets checked, specials and allergens briefed |
| 3pm | Mid-service | Hot-hold temps, toilets, floors |
| 10.30pm | Kitchen close | Food covered and dated, end-of-day temps, gas off, floors |
| 11.30pm | Close | Cash, doors, alarm (photo of alarm panel required) |
| Monday only | Weekly clean | Extraction filters, oven descale, walk-in deep clean |
Need a starting point? Our kitchen cleaning schedule template and pub opening and closing checklist are free to copy and paste in.
Rotas too, at no extra cost
The checklist app is the same app that builds your rota. Staff set availability from their phones, ShiftComplete builds a draft rota in seconds that's fair across the team, and you publish it to everyone's phone. So the person rota'd to close is the person who sees the closing list.
Pricing and trial
- £1.49 per staff member per month. Every feature included.
- No per-site fee, no contract. Remove staff any time.
- Free for 60 days, no card needed to start.
- About five minutes to set up, with a free 15-minute set-up call if you'd like help loading your lists.
- 100+ staff? Talk to us.
What customers say
"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 Kirkham Hospitality story.
Who it's for
- Independent restaurants that want the kitchen's routine written down, not living in the head chef's memory.
- Pubs with food, where bar and kitchen checks need to live in one place.
- Cafés with a small team and a lot of opening-time jobs.
- Hotels running a restaurant, bar and breakfast service with different teams.
- Small groups that want to see every site's checks from one dashboard, with area-manager roles and unlimited managers.
Start your free 60-day trial, or book a set-up call and we'll build your first checklists with you.
Frequently asked questions
What is a daily checklist app for hospitality?
It's an app that holds your opening, closing, cleaning and safety checks and lets staff tick them off on a phone or tablet as they go. Each tick records who did it and when, and managers can see what's been missed without walking the building. The good ones also let checks differ by day of the week and attach photos as proof.
Do my staff need to download anything?
Not with ShiftComplete. It runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or computer, so staff open a link and log in. That matters in hospitality, where people change phones often, don't want another app, or share a tablet behind the bar. Nothing to install means nothing to update and nothing to fail on an old handset.
Will an EHO accept digital checklists?
The Food Standards Agency says records must be up to date and available for inspection, and its Safer Food, Better Business guidance allows the diary to be kept electronically. Digital records that are named, timestamped and easy to show tend to be clearer than a damp folder. ShiftComplete helps you keep the records an EHO asks to see, but you remain responsible for your food safety management.
How much does a restaurant checklist app cost?
ShiftComplete is £1.49 per staff member per month, with every feature included: checklists, temperature logs, allergens, incidents, rotas and reports. There's no per-site fee and no contract, and you can remove staff at any time. A restaurant with 18 staff would pay £26.82 a month. It's free for 60 days, no card needed.
Can different checks show on different days?
Yes. You can set a checklist to appear only on the days it's needed, so the Monday deep clean of the extraction canopy filters only shows on Monday and Saturday's extra pre-service checks only show on Saturday. That keeps each day's list short, which is the main reason staff keep doing them.
Sources
- Food Standards Agency: Safer food, better business (SFBB)
- Food Standards Agency: Managing food safety
Checked 24 October 2026. This guide is general information, not legal advice.