Australian law requires chilled food at or below 5C, but the probe you are legally required to own is accurate only to plus or minus 1C, so a reading of 5.0C is consistent with food at 6.0C and a 4C target is what puts the tolerance band inside the limit.
Skai Solutions answers the phone for Australian and New Zealand venues, so the cool room usually reaches us as a 7am call rather than as a compliance question. The figures below come from Food Standards Australia New Zealand and from a Townsville City Council information sheet for food businesses, both read on 24 October 2026.
Two numbers and one piece of equipment. Food Standards Australia New Zealand requires potentially hazardous food to be kept at or below 5C or at or above 60C during storage, display and transport, unless you have safe alternative arrangements in place. And it requires a thermometer you can put into the food: in FSANZ's words, you need a thermometer that can be inserted into the food, which means it must have a probe.
The probe has a legal specification too, and this is the number the posters leave off. FSANZ says the thermometer must also be accurate to plus or minus 1 degree C. Townsville City Council's information sheet for food businesses says the same thing twice: the device must accurately measure the temperature of potentially hazardous food to plus or minus 1C, and must maintain an accuracy of plus or minus 1C.
Put the two requirements next to each other and something falls out of them that almost nothing operator facing says out loud.
The limit is 5C. The instrument you are required to use is accurate to plus or minus 1C. So when your probe reads exactly 5.0C, the food is somewhere between 4.0C and 6.0C, and the thermometer is working correctly either way. FSANZ states this directly: a reading of 5C means the food's actual temperature is between 4C and 6C.
That has a practical consequence. A cool room held at a 5C target spends a meaningful share of its life above the limit and your records will not show it, because the record is the reading and the reading cannot resolve it. A 4C target puts the entire tolerance band at or under 5C.
| Probe reading | What the food could actually be | Inside the limit? |
|---|---|---|
| 3.0C | 2.0C to 4.0C | Yes, on every reading in the band |
| 4.0C | 3.0C to 5.0C | Yes, on every reading in the band |
| 5.0C | 4.0C to 6.0C | Not demonstrated |
| 6.0C | 5.0C to 7.0C | No |
This table is Skai Solutions' arithmetic on two published figures, not a rule, and nobody can fine you for a reading of 5.0C on that basis alone. Treat it as the reason to set your target a degree lower than the limit rather than at it. It costs nothing: the compressor was going to run anyway, and the difference in energy between a 4C and a 5C setpoint on a working, well sealed room is small against the cost of one condemned delivery.
With a glass of ice. The FSANZ fact sheet tells you to keep the probe calibrated and to follow the manufacturer's instructions, but it does not give a method. Townsville City Council's sheet does, and it is the one worth writing on the wall.
Put the probe into a glass of ice with a small amount of water. The reading should be 0C. If the reading is out by more than 1C, the council's advice is that the thermometer should be replaced or professionally adjusted.
That is the whole test, it takes two minutes, and it is the only cheap way to find out that the number you have been writing in your records for eight months has been wrong by three degrees. Note what the council does not offer: a boiling water check. For chilled storage the ice point is the one that matters, because it sits next to the temperature you actually care about.
At least once every 12 months, following your supplier's advice, and again any time the thermometer has been dropped or bumped, because the council's sheet notes it can lose accuracy then. In a working kitchen the second trigger fires far more often than the first. A probe lives in an apron pocket and gets knocked off a bench, and nobody writes that down.
The practical version: check it on the ice point monthly, which costs you 24 minutes a year, and immediately after any drop. If it fails, replace it. A probe is cheaper than a day's stock, and a probe that reads two degrees low is worse than no probe at all because it manufactures a clean record of a non compliant room.
In the food, in several places, and not on the wall unit's display. FSANZ is explicit that a built in thermometer measures the unit's operating temperature rather than the food's, so a separate probe is still required. The display on the door tells you about the machine. Your obligation is about the food.
FSANZ also says there are colder and hotter spots within the refrigerator or unit, and that when food is cooling the top of the food may be cooler than the middle. In a cool room that means the spot to check is not the one at eye level by the door. Check the back corner furthest from the fan, the top shelf, and whatever came in on the last delivery, because a pallet of warm stock raises the air around it before it comes down itself.
For packaged chilled goods, FSANZ's method is to place the probe between two packages so the package stays intact, and it is honest about the limitation: that reading will be approximate. Use it for a routine check and open a package when the approximate reading is marginal.
In Australia, no, and this surprises people who have been told minus 18C is the law. Both of the relevant FSANZ storage pages were checked and the only frozen food instruction in them is FSANZ's own phrase, make sure frozen food stays frozen hard, with no figure attached to it. The chilled requirement is a hard 5C. The frozen one is a condition, not a number.
So minus 18C is an equipment convention rather than a legal threshold, which is where the supplier range of minus 18C to minus 25C comes from. Do not write minus 18C into a food safety program as the legal requirement, and do not let anyone tell you a reading of minus 16C is a breach of a number that does not exist. The question to answer is whether the food is hard. Our page on what to do when a commercial freezer stops freezing covers the failure case.
Not as written. The FSANZ fact sheet states on its face that the Food Safety Standards do not apply in New Zealand: chapter 3 is an Australia only instrument. A New Zealand operator has obligations under their own food control plan or national programme instead, and the temperature and verification requirements come from that document rather than from FSANZ chapter 3.
The physics does not change across the Tasman and neither does the tolerance arithmetic, so the 4C target and the ice point check are just as useful in Auckland. What changes is which document an auditor holds. Our page on what a food control plan costs in New Zealand sets out the New Zealand side.
Check the probe before you call anyone, using the ice point test above, because a thermometer that has drifted is the cheapest possible explanation and the one nobody checks first. Then check the obvious mechanical causes, which are almost always the door seal or an overstocked room rather than the compressor. Our page on what to do when a commercial fridge stops cooling works through those in order of cost, and the 2 hour 4 hour rule is what decides whether the food in there can still be sold while you sort it out.
Keep the readings. A dated record of twice daily food temperatures is the thing that turns an inspection from an argument into a document, and it is also the only way you will ever spot a room that has been drifting for a month. How long to keep food safety records covers how long to hold them, and what a cool room costs in Australia has the figures if the answer turns out to be that the room is too small for the trade.
The morning you find the cool room at 9C is the morning the phone does not stop. Suppliers, the first bookings of the day, and somebody from last night wanting to know if their function is still on. The decision about whether you open is made better with a probe in your hand than with a handset in it.
Skai Solutions answers the phone for Australian and New Zealand venues, which is why we hear about cool rooms at 7am. It has no opinion about your food safety program. It means the person holding the probe is not also the person holding the phone.
What temperature should a cool room be set to?
The legal requirement in Australia is that potentially hazardous food is kept at or below 5C. Because the probe you are required to use is only accurate to plus or minus 1C, a target of 4C or below is what puts the whole tolerance band at or under the limit. That last point is our arithmetic, not a rule.
Does a reading of 5C mean the cool room is compliant?
Not on its own. FSANZ says a thermometer must be accurate to plus or minus 1C and that a reading of 5C means the food's actual temperature is between 4C and 6C, so a reading of exactly 5.0C does not demonstrate the food is at or below the limit.
How do you calibrate a probe thermometer in a commercial kitchen?
Put the probe in a glass of ice with a small amount of water. The reading should be 0C. Townsville City Council's food business sheet says that if the reading is out by more than 1C the thermometer should be replaced or professionally adjusted.
How often should a food probe be calibrated?
At least once every 12 months following your supplier's advice, and again whenever the thermometer has been dropped or bumped, because it can lose accuracy then. In practice the drop is the more common trigger in a working kitchen.
Can you use the cool room's own temperature display instead of a probe?
No. FSANZ says a built in unit thermometer measures the unit's operating temperature rather than the food's, so a separate probe thermometer is still needed. The door display tells you about the machine, and the obligation is about the food.
Is minus 18C the legal freezer temperature in Australia?
No. Australian food law sets no freezer temperature. The only frozen food instruction on the FSANZ storage pages is to make sure frozen food stays frozen hard, with no figure attached. Minus 18C is an equipment convention, not a legal threshold.
Where should you measure the temperature in a cool room?
In the food rather than the air, in several places, because FSANZ says there are colder and hotter spots within a unit. Check the back corner away from the fan, the top shelf and the most recent delivery. For packaged food, place the probe between two packages, which FSANZ notes gives an approximate reading.