Food safety in an Icelandic kitchen: temperatures, records and what inspectors flag most

A health inspection goes well when the kitchen can show, on paper, the good work it already does every day. Most of what inspectors ask for is simple: the right temperatures, a short written plan, and records that prove you follow it. This guide covers the numbers, the records and the findings that come up most often, as of October 2026.

The rules in one paragraph

The core hygiene rules for every restaurant in Iceland come from EU Regulation 852/2004, which Iceland adopted with regulation no. 103/2010.¹ The regulation asks every food business to run a permanent procedure based on the HACCP principles. That means finding the hazards, setting limits at the points that matter, checking them, fixing what goes wrong and keeping records.² It also asks you to make sure that food handlers are supervised and trained for the work they do.² In Icelandic, this whole system is called innra eftirlit (internal control). The older Icelandic name for HACCP is GÁMES.³

The numbers to know

Matvælastofnun (MAST) gives these temperatures in its guidance for kitchens:^{3 4}

MAST notes that microorganisms cannot multiply above 60 °C.³ For cooling, MAST says to cool food as fast as possible, in shallow containers, and not to leave sensitive food at room temperature.⁴ The EU rule says the same thing in general terms.² We found no Icelandic source that sets a fixed cooling time, so write your own target into your plan and measure against it.

Buffets need extra care

When guests do not all sit down at once, or food stands out for more than two hours, MAST asks you to watch the temperatures closely and record them.⁵ Two points are easy to miss. Hot-holding equipment on a buffet keeps food hot but does not heat it up, so the food must be at 60 °C when it goes out. Cold display equipment without mechanical cooling only slows the warming, so keep cold food in the fridge until you serve it.⁵

Internal control in a small kitchen

Internal control is your own written plan for keeping food safe. It is scaled to the business. MAST describes three levels: basic elements (grunnþættir), general internal control (almennt innra eftirlit) and internal control with HACCP. The inspectorate decides which level applies from the information in your permit application.³

For most restaurants, the plan covers these parts:³

• staff training, and a record of it
• hygiene rules for staff and visitors (umgengnisreglur)
• a cleaning plan, with what is cleaned, how often and by whom
• pest control
• temperature control, with limits and what to do when a reading is off
• receiving goods, including what to do with a delivery that is too warm

The usual rule is to measure and record the temperature of every fridge and freezer at least once a day.³ A record is simple: the date, the unit, the reading and the initials of the person who checked. When a reading is outside the limit, write down what you did about it. HER’s guide for food businesses puts it the same way: record the checks, act when something is wrong, and record the fix.⁸

A well-run system also has a direct benefit. Reykjavík’s fee schedule lets HER lower its fees or inspect less often when a business has run internal control for the past three years that goes further than the rules require.⁹

What inspectors flag most often

The best public data on this comes from the Reykjavík health inspectorate (HER). In September 2021, HER supervised 1.940 food businesses. Of those, 519 were restaurants, cafés, bars, caterers and other places that make and sell ready meals.⁶ HER made 1.267 inspection visits that year.⁶

HER logged 596 inspections of food businesses and accommodation in its checklist software. Just over 70 % of the items checked were in order. Just under 30 %, more than 17.000 items, were a deviation or a note for improvement.⁶ These were the ten questions that most often got a deviation or a note:⁶

Most frequent inspection findings, Reykjavík health inspectorate, 2021

Show the data

Finding	Number of findings
Food safety system not sufficient	374
Supervision and training of food handlers	281
Written hygiene rules for staff and visitors	272
Cleaning materials stored in the wrong place	266
Staff training not sufficient	255
Sinks not labelled	249
No written procedure for receiving goods	239
Earlier findings not fixed	237
Cleaning records and follow-up	232
No defined temperature limits	226

Most items on this list are about written routines and records, and a few hours of work can fix most of them:

• Write the plan down and keep it where staff can find it.
• Train new staff in their first week, and sign a sheet that says so.
• Put up the hygiene rules on the wall in the kitchen.
• Hang up cleaning tools and keep cleaning materials away from food.
• Label the sinks: hand basin, utensils, food.
• Write a short receiving procedure: check the temperature and the date, and reject what fails.
• Set your limits for each fridge, freezer and core temperature, and say what staff do when a reading is off.
• Close old findings before the next visit.

What guests complain about

HER received about 234 complaints in 2021. The largest groups were food labelling (62), noise (44) and uncleanliness (29). There were 18 reports of suspected food poisoning and 13 about foreign objects in food. HER recorded no large outbreak of food poisoning that year.⁶ Labelling includes allergen information. In Resto, the allergens of each dish show on the POS, so staff can answer a guest’s question at the table. Our guide to allergens on the menu covers the rules.

Inspection results are public in Reykjavík

HER publishes the results of its routine inspections of licensed and registered businesses in Reykjavík on the city’s website. The page shows the most recent inspection of each business, and it may cover only some of the items.⁷ Look up your own place. It is a quick way to see what the inspectors look at.

Who inspects from 1 January 2027

From 1 January 2027, MAST closes and a new state agency, Stofnun atvinnuveganna, takes over its work. The food act then names this agency as the body that does official food control and issues food permits, in place of the municipal health committees.¹⁰ Hygiene licensing moves to the Environment and Energy Agency (Umhverfis- og orkustofnun).¹¹

The food safety rules stay the same. The temperatures, the internal control and the records in this guide still apply. Only the agency that visits your kitchen changes. For more on permits and the move, see Opening a restaurant in Iceland.

About the sources

• The MAST booklet on internal control dates from 2002 and the HER good-practice guide from 2011. They refer to older rules, so we use them as guidance, not as law.^{3 8}
• The inspection numbers come from HER’s 2021 annual report, the most recent one that we found. They cover Reykjavík only. We did not find comparable figures from other inspectorates.