Free downloadable resource
A free printable poster and an interactive stacking activity for commercial kitchens. Salad and fruit at the very top, raw poultry at the very bottom — and an honest look at why the famous “salad drawer” is one of the worst places for salad.
PDF | print-ready A4 | ref FRST26-1 | no sign-up needed
Search for a fridge storage chart online and most of the diagrams you find — including plenty aimed at professional kitchens — put the salad drawer at the bottom, underneath the raw meat. That layout is inherited from domestic fridges, and in a commercial kitchen it gets the logic exactly backwards. The rule that actually keeps people safe is simple: if a food will not be cooked before it is eaten, nothing raw may ever sit above it. Cooking is the kill step that destroys harmful bacteria; food that skips it has no safety net.
Work down the fridge in this order. Shelf one, at the very top: salad leaves, fruit and anything else served raw — these get the most protected position in the whole fridge because a drip of raw chicken juice onto a washed lettuce is never cooked away. Shelf two: ready-to-eat food such as dairy, cooked meats, cooled leftovers and desserts, covered and date-labelled. Shelf three: unwashed or muddy vegetables that are destined for the pan — cooking will deal with what soil brings in, but they still sit above raw meat. Then the raw zone, lowest in the fridge: raw fish and seafood, then raw beef, pork and lamb, and on the very bottom shelf raw poultry — the ingredient with the highest bacterial risk goes where its drips can only ever hit the fridge floor. The Food Standards Agency's guidance is the same principle in one line: store raw meat, poultry, fish and eggs below ready-to-eat food.
One thing worth being straight about, because it is the question the poster prompts most often: shelves one and two are both ready-to-eat, so the split between them is not a risk ranking. Neither may sit below raw food, and that is the part that matters. Salad and fruit take the top spot because they are usually the least protected items in the fridge — often loose or in open trays, and served with no further preparation at all — while dairy, cooked meats and desserts are normally covered and sealed. If your fridge works better with those two swapped, nothing unsafe has happened.
Raw meat, poultry and fish carry bacteria such as Campylobacter, Salmonella and E. coli O157. In a fridge those bacteria do not stay put: juices drip, packaging leaks, and a splash you never see transfers them to whatever sits below. What happens next depends entirely on the receiving food. A drip onto potatoes that will be roasted is destroyed in the oven. The same drip onto a bowl of prepared fruit salad goes straight onto a plate, because salad and fruit are served without any cooking at all. That is why height in the fridge equals protection: the less a food will be cooked, the higher it must sit.
This is not just good practice; it is the basis of UK law and guidance. Food businesses must protect food against contamination under retained Regulation (EC) 852/2004, and the Food Standards Agency's guidance and Safer Food Better Business packs are explicit: keep raw and ready-to-eat foods separate, store raw meat, poultry, fish and eggs below ready-to-eat food, and where possible use separate fridges for raw and ready-to-eat items. Alongside the stacking order, keep chilled food at 8°C or below — the legal maximum in England, Wales and Northern Ireland — and set the fridge at 5°C or below so you stay safely under it in real-world use.
A word of honesty: a poster and a stacking activity are awareness and training aids. They make the safe layout visible and easy to teach, but they are not a food safety management system and they do not by themselves make your business compliant. Your HACCP-based procedures, your temperature records and your local authority's expectations still apply — check current Food Standards Agency guidance if in doubt.
“Salad goes in the salad drawer at the bottom of the fridge.” In a commercial fridge, that is the single most dangerous place for it.
The “salad drawer” is a domestic idea — a humidity-controlled crisper designed for a home fridge that holds no raw meat below shoulder height. Copy it into a commercial kitchen and you put the food least able to defend itself (it will never be cooked) directly underneath every raw ingredient in the fridge, exactly where drips end up. Many storage charts online, and even some training materials, repeat this layout unchallenged.
Use the bottom drawer for what its position is actually good for: raw meat and fish in sealed containers — the drawer walls help contain any leaks — or vegetables that will be cooked. If raw meat and cook-first vegetables must share that space, keep the meat sealed in leak-proof containers and physically apart from the veg; cooking is a safety net, not a licence to let raw juices touch other food. And keep salad and fruit where they belong: on the top shelf, above everything raw.
Most kitchens the poster ends up in do not have a neat six-shelf upright. Undercounter fridges, two-shelf display units and crammed walk-ins are the norm, and staff quite reasonably ask what to do when the diagram doesn't match the fridge in front of them. The answer is that the six shelves are an illustration of one rule, not a requirement in themselves. Collapse the order as far as you need to, in this priority:
A few items sit awkwardly whatever the fridge. Eggs in shell are raw and shells carry Salmonella, so treat them as a raw item and keep them below ready-to-eat food — not in the door tray above the cooked meats. Vacuum-packed and sous-vide raw fish or meat is still raw: the pack reduces the drip risk considerably, but it can be pierced, and an unopened pack is not a reason to move it up next to the salad. Defrosting meat is the highest-risk item in the fridge on any given day — it should be on the bottom, in a tray deep enough to hold everything that comes out of it.
Reading the order is one thing; placing it under pressure is another. Drag each food group onto a shelf — or select a food, then select a shelf — then check your stacking. Shelves one and two are both safe homes for ready-to-eat food, so either order at the top counts.
Six food groups, six shelves. Where does each one go?
Keyboard: tab to a food and press Enter to pick it up, then tab to a shelf and press Enter to place it. Press Escape to put it down again.
A training aid, not an assessment — the layout follows FSA guidance to store raw meat, poultry and fish below ready-to-eat food.
Put the poster where the stacking decision is made — at the fridge door, not in a folder:
Laminate the copies near sinks and prep surfaces — fridge doors get wiped down, and a soggy poster teaches nothing.
The poster shows the safe layout; training explains the “why” behind it — cross-contamination, temperature control and the system that decides your fridge rules in the first place. These two EHO-approved courses cover both.
Essential food safety for anyone who handles food — including safe storage, temperature control and keeping raw and ready-to-eat food apart. Catering, retail, early years, manufacturing and schools versions.
From £14 +VAT · multiple purchasing from £7 +VAT
View Level 2 versions →Your fridge layout is a control in a bigger system. This course explains hazard analysis and critical control points — how a kitchen decides what could go wrong, and which checks stop it.
£14 +VAT · multiple purchasing from £7 +VAT
View the HACCP course →Free and print-ready. Stick it on every fridge and chiller door, run the stacking activity in your next team briefing, and make “nothing uncooked below raw” the house rule.
Download the poster (PDF)Free commercial fridge storage poster + a 2-minute stacking activity — the correct shelf order, and why salad never goes below raw meat (whatever the "salad drawer" says). No sign-up: https://www.thesaferfoodgroup.com/fridge-storage-poster.php