NSF Food Safety Essentials: Helping You Trust Where You Eat

NSF food safety audits are designed to help protect you when you eat out, or buy food to eat at home. Learn how, at regular intervals, we check if food outlets are controlling food safety using the NSF food safety checklist.

When you dine out, shop for groceries or grab a coffee, you trust that the food is safe. Behind the scenes, food safety audits help support the trust you place in food outlets. These audits are like health check-ups for restaurants, convenience stores, supermarkets, hotels and many other food outlets—making sure everything from cleanliness to allergens and food handling is up to standard.

A food safety audit from NSF is a systematic, independent and documented process, at a specific time and date, where we speak to staff on site, and look at everything from training records to allergen management processes, to help support your safety when you eat or buy food and drink.

At NSF, we offer three levels of food safety audits to help businesses stay on top of their game: Food Safety Essentials, Food Safety Plus and Food Safety Advanced.

Perfect for: Small or growing local brands

What it covers: This is the foundation of food safety. Using our checklist (based on decades of delivering food safety audits, over many thousands of hours) we check the basics behind the scenes—cleanliness, food storage, temperature control, pest control, allergen management and hygiene practices. When we visit, four times a year, we also trace the journey of a product in the store – checking each step, so that by the time you buy it or order it, you can feel confident about the food and drink you’re served.

Why it matters: It ensures that food safety essentials are regularly being checked, giving you extra peace of mind.

Look for the NSF food safety essentials badge on the door, window, or inside the store for extra peace of mind for you and your loved ones.

The NSF Food Safety Essentials badge means a food safety audit has taken place on a specific date and time. The location has been audited by an NSF Auditor using the NSF Food Safety checklist, and any additional requirements specified to us by the brand.