Fast food restaurant equipment technician - refrigeration downtime emergency SOP - save the food before you fix the machine, the thermometer reading is the only verdict on what to keep, and a tripped breaker gets reset exactly once

You are the equipment technician for a fast food restaurant (possibly directing store staff over the phone). Write this store's "Refrigeration/Freezer Downtime Emergency Response" as an archivable SOP. The readers are store staff and the shift lead. Put this understanding as the SOP's opening statement: the big loss in a refrigeration outage is usually not the repair bill, it is the food inside the cabinet - the entire procedure is ordered around "save the food first, fix the equipment second".

Store information I will provide: [unit list with capacities and what each holds (raw meat / dairy / prepped items / drinks and condiments), this store's food action temperature thresholds (cooler [deg C], freezer [deg C] - a reading past the line puts the food into disposition), the list of neighboring shops we can call on, repair contacts and spare-unit situation].

SOP structure (on a timeline, five fixed stages):
1. First 10 minutes - scope and stop the bleeding:
- Scope first: one unit down or the whole row dead - check the breaker panel; a tripped breaker gets reset exactly once; if it trips again, stop trying and call an electrician (a repeated trip may be a ground fault, not an overload)
- Count without opening: if you cannot list the contents through the door, record only the big categories (raw meat / dairy / prepped items) - every door opening burns stored cold
- Tag every affected unit "DOWN - DO NOT OPEN"
2. Within 30 minutes - transfer priority:
- High-risk food moves first: raw meat, dairy, mid-thaw prepped items; drinks and condiments go last (least temperature-sensitive)
- Destination order: make room in this store's other units -> neighboring shops' coolers (per the pre-arranged list) -> insulated bins with ice
- Log every batch moved: item / quantity / destination - reconciliation and insurance both need it
3. 30 minutes to 2 hours - monitor and call for repair in parallel:
- Measure and log the cabinet temperature every 30 minutes - from start to finish, the food's fate rests on this number alone, never on "smells fine" or "still feels cold"
- Food that crosses the store's action threshold [deg C] gets downgraded or discarded per the shift lead's authority, logged
- When you call it in, say what has already been tried (reset, transfers) - it saves the technician an on-site diagnostic pass
4. After 2 hours - repair arrival decisions:
- An emptied cabinet can be powered down for repair; one still holding food gets cold held first - confirm the order with the technician in person
5. Recovery and reload:
- Once back under the action threshold, run the cabinet empty for [ ] hours and confirm the temperature holds before reloading - repaired is not the same as stable
- Clean before reloading; recall transferred food per the log; anything that crossed the line gets handled per stage 3

Output format: the five-stage timeline SOP with tickable actions per stage; plus a one-page "downtime log" template (time / measured temperature / transfer detail / disposition detail / repair ticket number).

Constraints:
- Cite no regulatory temperature limits and give no "safe for X hours without power" blanket promises - judgment uses only this store's action threshold [deg C] and measured readings; that is the one hard line a tool can hold
- Staff never open the machine, and nobody but an electrician touches the panel
- No "contact a professional as soon as possible" filler - this SOP's reader IS the technician, or the person being directed by one over the phone
- The neighboring-shop list must be arranged in advance - begging the shop next door mid-crisis is the fallback of fallbacks, and this requirement belongs in the SOP's readiness section

Why it is written this way

The ordering is the value system. A standard repair SOP puts "call for repair" in step one; this one pushes it to stage four - because however slow the repair is, it is an hours-scale loss, while food spoils on a minutes-scale countdown. Transfer priority is ranked by risk (raw meat and dairy out first, drinks and condiments last) so that nobody has to invent an order mid-panic; the last rung of the destination ladder is insulated bins with ice - it does not pretend to be a perfect plan, it is the worst case that is still always doable.

The thermometer is the only verdict because "smells fine" and "still feels cold" are the two most common self-deceptions after a cooling loss - and the two least explainable sources in any after-the-fact review. The action threshold is this store's own [deg C], not a regulation number - regulation numbers get read differently in every store, while "measured past the line, act" is a rule that runs tomorrow morning. A thermometer reading is the one piece of evidence neither side can rewrite, and it is exactly what insurance and platform reviews ask to see.

"A tripped breaker gets reset exactly once" exists to gate the hopeful reflex: a repeated trip may be a ground fault rather than an overload, and staff testing "maybe once more" are testing away a safety margin. This has to be written as a rule, not advice - advice gets reinterpreted in a panic, rules do not.

The log template matters as much as the procedure, because the three downstream scenes after a downtime - an insurance claim, a platform review, franchise headquarters asking questions - all want the same timeline. Logging while handling is the only way it stays true; a sheet backfilled afterwards has no evidentiary value. Attaching the template directly to the SOP makes "logging" part of the flow instead of an extra chore.

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