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National Food Safety Month: Keep Time & Temperature on Your Side
Sep 28, 2026
A few degrees—or a few extra minutes—can make all the difference in food safety.
For Week 5 of National Food Safety Month, we’re serving up the final ingredient in our Recipe for Food Safety Success: time and temperature control.
From receiving and storage to preparation, cooking, cooling and service, keeping food at safe temperatures is essential to preventing foodborne illness. Restaurant leaders can help eliminate guesswork by making temperature monitoring a consistent part of daily operations and ensuring employees know how to properly use and sanitize a food thermometer.
Know Your Numbers
The temperature danger zone is 41°F–135°F, where bacteria can grow rapidly. Key practices include cooking foods to their required minimum internal temperatures, hot-holding at 135°F or above, and cooling foods properly. For example, foods should cool from 135°F to 70°F within two hours and from 70°F to 41°F within four additional hours.
Remind your team that thermometers—not appearance, texture or smell—should determine whether food has reached a safe temperature. Thermometers should be clean, calibrated and sanitized between uses.
The Week 5 Time & Temperature Bundle gives restaurant leaders practical tools to reinforce these practices, including a Time & Temperature Recipe Card, Food Temperature Safety Chart, Shift Meeting Brief and Time & Temperature Policy Template.
As National Food Safety Month comes to a close, remember that food safety success requires every ingredient: a strong culture, proper cleaning and sanitizing, cross-contamination prevention, personal hygiene, and time and temperature control.
Keep food safe, keep your team confident and keep time and temperature on your side—every shift, every day.