The sports club canteen has to be able to explain it too

The treasurer of a football club put it the way many boards do: we are not hospitality, we just run the canteen. Yet the deep fryer is there, so is the chopping board for the fried egg sandwich, and on Sunday the cheese rolls sit in a tray without a lid for two hours. That is working with perishable food. The size of the menu does not change the duty.

Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 applies to food businesses. A club that sells food, even when the people behind the counter are volunteers, falls under it in practice. The NVWA looks at the food and how it is handled, not at the fact that the proceeds go to the youth teams.

What usually goes wrong in a canteen

Not the theory of seven principles. Three habits. The fridge that also chills drinks and therefore sits at 10°C. The cloth that wipes the toastie grill and then the worktop. And the person who ‘always does it this way’ and has never held a thermometer. A short course does not remove those habits in one afternoon, but it gives the board something to point to: this is the limit, this is why the delivery goes back.

Volunteers come and go. A folder of certificates from people who have not pulled a pint in two seasons does not help Sunday’s shift. Buy places for the team that is there now, and share the link in the group chat. English is fine if that is the language in which someone really reads the question. More on that in the course in English.

A restaurant and a canteen differ in their menu. The meaning of the acronym does not. That is in what HACCP means.