The foundation underneath
Growth is worth very little in a business that can be closed.
This is not the largest part of our work, and it is the part that must be secure before the rest of it is worth attempting. A business carrying regulatory risk cannot responsibly be made busier, and a published rating of one or two suppresses trade in a way no amount of marketing will recover.
The part nobody explains
Your rating is three separate scores, not one.
Few operators have ever had this explained to them, which is why an immaculate kitchen can still find itself capped at a one. Move the sliders and the mechanism becomes plain.
How food is prepared, cooked, cooled and stored. Scored 0 to 25, and generally correctable within days.
Cleanliness, layout, lighting and ventilation. Scored 0 to 25, and generally correctable with capital.
Your documented system, your records and your history of keeping them. Scored 0, 5, 10, 20 or 30, and correctable only over time.
Very good
Total 15 / highest single score 5
Nothing is holding you back. All three scores sit within the range a five allows.
A score of twenty for confidence in management caps the business at a one, however immaculate the kitchen.
The available scores are nought, five, ten, twenty and thirty. There is no fifteen and no twenty five, so a business that cannot evidence its system does not slip gently; it falls from ten to twenty in a single step. The judgement rests on records accumulated over weeks, not on anything assembled the evening before, and it is the element that most often holds an otherwise capable business down.
We maintain that evidence alongside you, month by month. Temperatures, cleaning, training and allergen records are reviewed while there is still time to correct them, so that any gap is identified by us rather than discovered by an officer. It is unglamorous work. It is also the reason the commercial side of the business is never interrupted.
What stops getting filled in
Businesses seldom fail because the food is unsafe.
They fail because the evidence proving it was safe was never kept. Record keeping is the first discipline to lapse when a kitchen is short staffed on a Friday evening, and it is precisely the material on which the rating is judged.
| Record | Frequency | What its absence costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Fridge and freezer temperatures | Twice daily | The cold chain cannot be evidenced, and a failing unit passes unnoticed |
| Cooking and cooling checks | Every service | Critical controls left unevidenced at the point they matter most |
| Cleaning schedules | Daily and periodic | Both the hygiene and the structural score left exposed at inspection |
| Delivery and supplier checks | Every delivery | Traceability broken, and a recall impossible to demonstrate |
| Staff training records | On hire and refresh | Confidence in management damaged directly and immediately |
| Allergen matrix | Every menu change | Regulatory exposure, and a genuine risk to a customer |
| Nobody notices for six weeks. Then an officer asks to see six weeks. | ||
So we keep it with you. Each month we compare what was recorded against what ought to have been, and tell you what is absent before anybody else has cause to ask. Inspection readiness maintained, rather than inspection readiness restored.
Something we will not say
Nobody can promise you a rating.
Not this company, and not any other. The officer determines it on the day, on the evidence found at the time, and no adviser holds any influence over that judgement. Any firm offering to guarantee a five is selling something it does not control.
What can be done is to ensure that when the officer arrives, everything asked for exists, is current, and has been kept properly for long enough to carry weight. That is the part within your influence, and it is the part we do well.
The rest of it, which is bringing people back through your door once the standards are secure, is the reason this company exists at all.
Begin here
An inspection approaching, or a rating recently fallen?
This is the one matter we will always try to see quickly. If you have been given a date, tell us what it is.
hello@cityandfields.co.uk