Restaurant checklist templates
10 complete restaurant checklists — 178 items in total — that you can work through in this browser without an account, a download or an email address. Every list is the same content the paid product starts from, not a teaser of it.
- Bar closing checklist
Closing a bar properly — rails, guns, glass washer, draft, keg cooler, drawer.
- Bar opening checklist
Stocking and setting a bar before service.
- Coffee shop closing checklist
Closing a café — backflush, wands, grinders, brewers, case, floor, drawer.
- Coffee shop opening checklist
Opening a café — machine warm-up, dial-in, milk temps, pastry case, float.
- Food temperature log
A daily cold-holding and hot-holding temperature log with the ranges an inspector expects to see.
- Health inspection prep checklist
The things inspectors actually cite — documentation, hand sinks, cold holding, labeling, sanitizer, storage.
- Kitchen deep clean checklist
The weekly clean that a nightly close never gets to — hoods, behind the line, fryers, gaskets, drains.
- Restaurant closing checklist
Everything that has to happen to close a restaurant properly, front of house to back door, in the order you walk it.
- Restaurant opening checklist
What to check before the doors open, from the walk-in temperature to the float in the drawer.
- Weekly manager walkthrough checklist
The once-a-week look at the building itself — exterior, dining room, safety equipment, storage, staff paperwork.
Which checklist should a restaurant start with?
The close. It is the shift with the least supervision, the most expensive failure modes — a back door, a walk-in, a fryer — and the only one where nobody is around to notice a skipped step until the next morning. Opening is the second, because a bad walk-in reading at 8 am is a phone call and the same reading at 11 am is a menu you can no longer serve.
How do you turn a template into something staff actually use?
Cut it before you add to it. A list of 40 items that takes an hour gets signed in the parking lot; a list of 27 that follows the walk gets done. Order the sections the way a person physically moves through the building, put the readings where the probe already is, and ask for a photograph only where you would otherwise have to take somebody's word for it. Two or three photos on a closing list is about right. Ten is a list people learn to fake.
Are these checklists free?
Yes, and permanently. Tick through any of them here, print one, or copy the text into whatever you already use. This page proves what to do. Donewell proves it got done. The paid product adds the name, the timestamp, the photo taken on the spot and the morning digest of what was missed.
Start a location Fourteen days free. Pick a template during setup.