Guide · Verification

What Happens at a Food Verification Visit?

A verifier — your local council, or an MPI-recognised agency or verifier — reviews the records your Food Control Plan or National Programme requires, watches how you work, and asks you and your staff questions to check the plan is understood and working. Afterwards you get a written report confirming the outcome and any corrective actions, together with an invoice for the visit. Here is the full timeline — before, during and after — and how to make the records part quick.

Get the free checklist See the Verification Pack

Searching for “food safety audit NZ”? Under the Food Act 2014 the check is called verification, and the person doing it is a verifier — that is the vocabulary you will see on your report.

Reviewed 2 August 2026 · KitchenSorted team · Re-reviewed quarterly

Before the visit

Who verifies you, when it happens, and what to prepare

Who your verifier is depends on what you are registered under. Local councils verify Simply Safe & Suitable template businesses that trade in a single region and sell mainly direct to consumers; everyone else uses an MPI-recognised agency or verifier. New businesses must arrange their first verification within 6 weeks of registration. All of this is set out on MPI’s Getting your food business verified page.

Your local council verifies you if…

You run a Simply Safe & Suitable template Food Control Plan, operate in a single region, and sell mainly direct to consumers — the typical café, restaurant or takeaway.

A recognised agency or verifier if…

You trade across regions or sell mainly to other businesses, you are on a National Programme (level 1, 2 or 3), or you run a custom Food Control Plan, My Food Plan or an industry template. Councils can do this work too where they hold recognition.

When your verification is due

New businesses arrange verification within 6 weeks of registration. One 6-week extension is possible under regulation 94A of the Food Regulations 2015 — you must request it no later than 2 weeks before the due date and give reasons. Existing businesses on a custom plan or National Programme level 3 have their first verification within 6 months; everyone else within 12 months (MPI).

What to have ready

The core of the visit is your records. For a Simply Safe & Suitable business, MPI’s Record keeping guidance (February 2026) lists the mandatory records — the core set for a typical café is:

Daily fridge/chiller temperature checks (the temperature of the food)
Trusted supplier list and delivery records — supplier, food type and quantity, temperature at receipt where applicable
Staff training records — who, date, what was covered, signed
Staff sickness records (who was sick, and when)
Equipment and facilities maintenance, including calibrating your own thermometer
“When something goes wrong” records — and make sure each one is closed out: what happened, how you fixed it, how you will prevent it
Customer complaints (when one has occurred)
Proving-your-method and batch checks for higher-risk processes (cooking poultry or minced meat, cooling, reheating, sous vide, and similar)

Also check you are working under the current version of your plan. For Simply Safe & Suitable that is v39-00005 — MPI required all registered businesses to be working under it by 30 April 2026 (MPI: Steps to a Simply Safe and Suitable template FCP).

Want this as a printable list? Download the free verification checklist.

During the visit

What the verifier actually does on the day

Three things: a records review, a walk-through of how you actually work, and questions for you and your staff. Central Otago District Council describes it as “viewing any records that are required to be kept and asking questions to find out if you and your staff have a good understanding of the requirements of your FCP or NP” (CODC: Getting verified).

Records review

The verifier asks to see the records your plan or programme requires — temperature checks, deliveries, training, corrective actions — for the period since the last visit.

Site walk-through

They watch how you work: storage, separation, cleaning in practice, thermometer use — checking that what happens in the kitchen matches what the plan says.

Staff questions

Expect questions to you and your team — what would you do if a fridge reads warm, who is trained on what — to confirm the plan is understood, not just filed.

Finding any record quickly is half the visit

Verification is billed by time. MPI’s own indicative range is $115 to $210 an hour plus travel fees (MPI: Steps to National Programme 2), and MPI notes that independent verifiers and local councils set their own fees — it recommends getting quotes (MPI).

That makes the records review a clock you can control. Paper records are perfectly acceptable — MPI supplies printable record blanks for exactly that — but ten minutes hunting through a ring binder for one week’s fridge checks is ten minutes on the meter. When the verifier asks “show me your delivery records for March”, the answer you want is seconds, not a shuffle.

After the visit

The report, the outcome, and your next visit

You receive a written report confirming the verification outcome and any corrective actions, together with an invoice for the cost of the visit (CODC: Getting verified). If corrective actions are raised, close them out in the agreed timeframe and keep the evidence — it is one of the records your next visit will review.

How the outcome sets your next verification date

For Food Control Plans, regulation 90 of the Food Regulations 2015 sets a frequency ladder of 18, 12, 9, 6 and 3 months:

An acceptable initial verification puts you at every 12 months
Two consecutive acceptable outcomes move you down to every 18 months — the best case
An unacceptable outcome moves you the other way: every 9, 6 or even 3 months, each visit invoiced

National Programmes run on longer cycles under regulations 91–94: level 3 at least every 2 years, level 2 at least every 3 years, and level 1 an initial verification only, with further visits only if something triggers an unscheduled verification under regulation 102 (Food Regulations 2015).

More detail: how verification frequency works in NZ, and what to do after an unacceptable verification outcome.

Walk in with every record already assembled

When the visit is booked and your verifier asks for records covering the period since the last one, KitchenSorted’s Verification Pack assembles every temperature log, delivery, cleaning record, training entry and corrective action for that period into one dated PDF. At $115–$210 an hour, a records review measured in minutes rather than an hour is real money — the pack does not change your outcome (that is always down to how you actually work), it changes how long the paperwork takes.

The Verification Pack, 4 years of history and reminders live in the paid plan. Your free-plan records are never deleted — they unlock in full when you upgrade.

Sources & review

Reviewed on 2 August 2026 by the KitchenSorted team. Regulatory pages are re-reviewed quarterly, and immediately when MPI announces template or policy changes. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.

This page is general information, not legal or food-safety advice. Always confirm requirements with MPI, your registration authority, or your verifier.