What compliance records should a new restaurant set up from day one?

Every operator who has ever reconstructed two years of service history for an adjuster wishes they had spent one afternoon on this before opening. Setting up record keeping at the start costs almost nothing, because there is no backlog and the vendor relationships are being formed anyway.

The services to expect

A commercial kitchen typically carries most of the following. Not all apply to every site, and the intervals below are common defaults rather than requirements, because the authority having jurisdiction sets the real ones.

• Kitchen exhaust hood and duct cleaning, NFPA 96, interval by cooking volume and fuel.
• Kitchen suppression system service, commonly semiannual.
• Portable extinguisher maintenance, commonly annual, with longer internal and hydrostatic cycles.
• Sprinkler inspection, testing and maintenance where present, NFPA 25, several cycles at once.
• Fire alarm testing where present, NFPA 72.
• Grease interceptor pumping, interval set by your local sewer authority.
• Backflow prevention assembly testing, commonly annual and usually filed with the water utility.
• Pest control, not code mandated but routinely inspected.
• Emergency generator exercise and load testing where one exists, NFPA 110.

The four things to do before you open

1. Decide where reports land, once. One destination for every vendor, not a personal inbox belonging to whoever happens to be managing. The most common cause of a missing record is that it went to a manager who left.
2. Tell every vendor that destination at the point you agree terms. They are winning your business and will agree to anything reasonable. Asking two years later is a favour; asking now is a term.
3. Write down who your vendor is for each service, with a phone number. When an inspector gives you thirty days to correct something, the first obstacle is often working out who services the thing.
4. Establish the landlord split in writing before you sign, and ask for their reports to be copied to you as a standing arrangement. See who is responsible under the lease.

Two things worth capturing at handover

If you are taking over an existing kitchen rather than building one, get the previous operator's service history and the last fire and health inspection reports as part of the deal, not afterwards. See what to request when buying.

Also photograph the equipment nameplates. Model and serial numbers for the hood, the suppression system and any generator are asked for constantly by servicing companies and are irritating to retrieve once the kitchen is busy.

Why the first year is when this fails

Opening a restaurant absorbs all available attention, and record keeping is the least urgent thing on any list until the moment it becomes the most urgent. The intervals are also long enough that nothing appears to be wrong for a year or more. By the time the gap is visible, it is a year deep.