Cold storage plan: what goes on which shelf?
Everyone in the kitchen knows the rule and nobody applies it: the further something still is from the plate, the lower it goes. Say which cold units you have and where each product family lives — the shelf, the temperature and the warnings follow by themselves. Print the poster and tape it to the fridge door.
How to make your cold storage plan
- 1
Tick the cold units you have
Walk-in chiller, fridge, saladette, fish fridge, freezer. Only what you tick reaches the poster, and the number of shelves decides whether two risk levels have to share.
- 2
Say where each product family lives
Nineteen product families, one dropdown each. Nobody fills in a shelf number: it follows from the risk level, and the tool speaks up when something is stored warmer than it keeps.
- 3
Print the poster and tape it to the door
One sheet per cold unit, with your own house notes underneath. A new starter reads it standing up, in ten seconds.
The order in a cold unit, top to bottom
Six risk levels, always in this order. Gravity is the only contamination route a shelf can actually stop — which is why everything that still gets cooked sits below everything that is eaten as it is.
| Shelf | Risk level | What goes there | Why there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ready to eat | Cooked dishes (chilled) · Stocks, sauces and dressings · Desserts and pastry · Cooked charcuterie and pâté · Washed, cut salad and garnish | Never cooked again, so nothing may be able to drip onto it. |
| 2 | Dairy and eggs | Milk, cream and yoghurt · Cheese · Eggs · Opened jars and decanted tins | Often goes straight to the table and picks up smells and juices from below. |
| 3 | Fruit and vegetables | Unwashed vegetables · Fruit · Fresh herbs | Still carries soil, but does not belong above anything ready to eat. |
| 4 | Raw fish | Raw fish and fillets · Shellfish and seafood | Raw, and the liquid runs easily — so below everything eaten as it is. |
| 5 | Raw meat | Raw beef, lamb and game · Raw pork | Raw juices with plenty of bacteria; only poultry and mince sit lower. |
| 6 | Poultry and mince | Raw poultry · Minced meat and fresh sausage · Anything defrosting | The highest risk in the building: always the bottom shelf, defrosting too. |
The words on this sheet
Five terms that come up in every kitchen inspection.
- Cold storage plan
- The fixed order products sit in inside a cold unit: the further something still is from the plate, the lower it goes, so raw juices can never drip onto something eaten as it is.
- Cross-contamination
- Bacteria moving from one product to another — by way of a shelf, a board, a hand, or juice dripping from a shelf above.
- Ready-to-eat food
- Anything a guest eats without further cooking: cooked dishes, sauces, cut salad, pastry. This group always sits on top.
- Cold chain
- The unbroken chilling from delivery to plate. Every stretch spent too warm costs shelf life that never comes back.
- Risk level
- A product family’s place in the top-to-bottom order. Not how expensive or how perishable it is, but how much still has to happen to it before it is eaten.
Frequently asked questions
In what order do you stack food in a fridge?
Top to bottom: ready-to-eat (cooked dishes, sauces, cut salad), then dairy and eggs, then fruit and vegetables, then raw fish, then raw meat, and at the bottom raw poultry, minced meat and anything defrosting. The reason is gravity: what leaks, leaks downwards.
Why does raw poultry go on the bottom shelf?
Because it carries the highest risk of anything in the kitchen and still has a cooking step between it and the guest. Anything below it could be contaminated by juice leaking out — and below the bottom shelf there is nothing.
What temperature should my cold units run at?
The tool works from what each product family itself needs: fish and mince want colder (around 2 °C) than most other products (around 4 °C). What your unit actually has to hold is set by your own HACCP procedures and your supplier’s packaging.
Where do I keep fish?
Ideally in a separate fish fridge or on ice, because fish only keeps to about 2 °C. Without one, the tool puts fish in your coldest unit on the shelf below the vegetables and above the meat — and says out loud that it is stored warmer there than it keeps.
What if my fridge has too few shelves?
Then two risk levels have to share one shelf, and the tool names which two. That is not a mistake, but it is an agreement: those products go in sealed containers, kept apart, and ready-to-eat never below raw.
Is this the same as a HACCP plan?
No. This sheet says where something lives; a HACCP plan records what you measure and log. They belong together: the temperature logs and the cleaning schedule come from the HACCP tool, and this poster hangs beside them on the door.
This is a house standard, not a statement of law. What must be recorded, at which temperature you must store and for how long differs per country and per inspectorate — always follow your own HACCP procedures and your supplier’s instructions.