Food recall response checklist: what to do when the FDA or USDA recalls something you bought
A recall rarely arrives at a convenient time. It's an email from your distributor on a Friday afternoon, a post on the FDA's recall list, or a guest asking whether "that spinach on the news" is in your salad. What you do in the first hour decides whether the product leaves your kitchen before anyone eats it.
This post is a checklist you can print and keep by the office door, plus a recall log to fill in each time. It works for a single café and for a group, where the same product may sit in three walk-ins.
This is general information, not legal advice. When a recall notice or your health department gives you specific instructions, follow them.
Who announces recalls, and how serious they are
Two federal agencies recall food. The FDA issues recalls of packaged food; USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issues recalls of meat, poultry and egg products. Recalls.gov, the government's combined recall site, explains the split on its food page, and FSIS posts its recalls at fsis.usda.gov/recalls.
The FDA sorts recalls into three classes (FDA, Recalls Background and Definitions):
Class | The FDA's definition |
|---|---|
Class I | "a situation in which there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to a violative product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death." |
Class II | "a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote." |
Class III | "a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative product is not likely to cause adverse health consequences." |
Treat every recall of something you bought as urgent until you've confirmed it isn't yours. The class tells you how bad it is; it doesn't change the first three steps.
Where to hear about them first. Your distributor should tell you: the FDA says the recalling company "generally issues a recall notification to their direct distributors or customers" (FDA 101: Product Recalls). Don't rely on that alone. The same FDA page says "The FDA offers a recall subscription service where users can sign up to receive daily or weekly notification of all FDA recalls." Sign up the owner's and the kitchen manager's email from the FDA's recalls page, and check that page once a day; it lists recalls by date with the brand, product and reason. It isn't complete, though: the FDA says "Not all recalls have press releases or are posted on this page."
The checklist
In the first hour
Step | What to do | Done |
|---|---|---|
1. Read the whole notice | Product name, brand, pack size, lot codes, dates, UPC, the states or stores it went to, and what the recalling company tells customers to do | ☐ |
2. Check your invoices | Did you buy this product from this supplier in the dates named? Find the invoice and the delivery | ☐ |
3. Check every storage spot | Walk-in, reach-ins, line coolers, dry storage, freezer, the bar, and other locations if you have them | ☐ |
4. Match the codes | Compare the lot code and date on each package with the notice. No match on any package: write that down, you're done after step 9 | ☐ |
5. Pull it | Take every matching package off the shelf, including opened ones | ☐ |
6. Segregate and label | Bag or box it, label it RECALLED, DO NOT USE, and keep it in one designated spot away from food and clean equipment | ☐ |
7. Find what you made with it | Prepped items, sauces, salads or frozen batches that used it. Hold those too and 86 the menu items | ☐ |
The FDA describes what's in a recall notification: "the product description, brand or name; size and type of packaging; UPC (universal product code); other product codes, such as lot codes, sell-by dates, or use-by dates; pictures of the packaging and labels; and distribution information" (FDA 101: Product Recalls). Those are the details to match in step 4. A recalled brand isn't always every lot of that brand.
Step 6 is in the FDA Food Code, which says products held "for credit, redemption, or return to the distributor, such as damaged, spoiled, or recalled products, shall be segregated and held in designated areas that are separated from FOOD, EQUIPMENT, UTENSILS, LINENS, and SINGLE-SERVICE and SINGLE-USE ARTICLES" (§6-404.11). The 2026 edition keeps the same wording.
The same day
Step | What to do | Done |
|---|---|---|
8. Follow the notice's instructions | Return to the supplier for credit, or discard, as the notice or your supplier says. Get the credit in writing | ☐ |
9. Record it | Fill in the recall log below, even when nothing matched | ☐ |
10. Clean if the notice says so | For a pathogen recall, clean and sanitize the shelves, bins and equipment the product touched | ☐ |
11. Tell the team | At the next pre-shift, say what was pulled, what's 86'd and what to tell guests who ask | ☐ |
12. Check other locations | Same supplier, same product: every store runs steps 3 to 9 | ☐ |
If a guest says they got sick
Take their details, don't argue, and call your health department. Our incident report form has a section for foodborne illness complaints, and handling customer complaints covers what to say on the spot. Keep the held product and your invoices: the health department may want to see them.
The recall log
Keep one row per recall notice, in a binder or a spreadsheet. A made-up example:
Field | Example |
|---|---|
Date and time you heard | Oct 20, 3:40 pm, distributor email |
Product, brand, size | Baby spinach, 4 lb case |
Lot codes or dates in the notice | Lot 2410-B, best by Oct 26 |
Recall class (if known) | Class I |
Did we buy it? Invoice | Yes, invoice 20418, Oct 20 |
Where found, and quantity | Walk-in: 1 case, unopened. Line cooler: about 1 lb opened |
Matched codes? | Yes, both |
Prepped items held | 2 qt spinach salad base |
Action | Returned 1 case for credit; opened bag and salad base discarded |
Credit received | Credit memo 5561, Oct 22 |
Cleaned | Line cooler shelf and salad bin, Oct 20 |
Other locations checked | Riverside: none. Old Town: none |
Done by, checked by | Two initials |
Two signatures matter more here than anywhere else: one person pulls the product, a second checks the shelves after.
Make the next recall faster
- Keep invoices where you can search them. Step 2 is only quick if you can find which delivery brought the product in. Our vendor order guide and receiving log cover what to keep from each delivery.
- Leave lot codes on the package. When you decant into bins, tape the label or write the lot code and date on the bin's label.
- Shellfish tags are the law already. The Food Code keeps shellstock tags or invoices for "90 calendar days from the date that is recorded on the tag, label, or invoice" (§3-203.12(C)). The 2026 edition keeps the 90 days.
- Traceability records are coming. The FDA's Food Traceability Rule adds record-keeping for foods on its Food Traceability List, and the FDA has guides on what it means for restaurants. The FDA says the original compliance date was January 20, 2026, that it proposed moving it to July 20, 2028, and that Congress "directed FDA not to enforce the Food Traceability Rule prior to that same date" (FDA, Food Traceability Rule).
Where Mays fits
Mays doesn't watch the FDA or USDA lists for you, so the email subscription above is still your alarm. Once a recall lands, Mays helps with steps 2, 5, 9 and 12:
- Find the delivery. Inventory → Invoices searches by invoice number or vendor. Open an invoice (the image at the top of this post) to see each line's description, the vendor's item code, quantity, pack and price, next to the photo or PDF of the invoice if it was captured. See Vendor invoices.
- Pull it at every store. Create a one-off task under Tasks → Create Task → Custom Task for each location, set to High priority with a Photo answer, so the closer sends a picture of the labeled, segregated product. See Creating one-off tasks.
- Record what you threw away. Inventory → Waste → Log waste with the reason Other and Recall in the description takes the quantity out of stock on hand and adds its cost to your waste total. See Logging waste.
- Leave a trail for the next manager. A logbook entry with Needs follow-up ticked stays on the Follow-ups tab until someone closes it, which is where the credit memo goes. See The manager logbook.
- Keep the checklist where people find it. Put this checklist in a Knowledge Base article shared with every location. See Knowledge Base basics.
What Mays doesn't do yet: it doesn't search invoices by item, it has no field for lot codes on an invoice line, and it doesn't alert you to new FDA or FSIS recalls.
Pull it, label it, write it down
Most recalls end with "we checked, it wasn't ours", and that answer is only worth something if it's written down with a time and a name.
Start your free trial: 30 days, every module, no card needed. Or book a walkthrough and we'll set up the recall task and the Knowledge Base article with you.