A cafeteria walk-in that reads 52 F at 7:30 AM with lunch service starting at 10:45 AM is a 90-minute decision tree, not a panic. The first 30 minutes determine whether the day's service ships; the next 60 minutes determine whether you avoid an FDACS finding and a NSLP audit comment.
Photograph the controller display, the calibrated probe in product, and the unit serial plate. Write down the time. This is the start of the record FDACS will ask for if a finding lands.
Check the obvious: door open? Gasket torn? Power tripped? Condenser plugged with grease? Fix what you can in five minutes.
Sort product by TCS risk. Items above 41 F for less than 4 hours can be moved to a working cooler or held with documentation under FDA Food Code 3-501.19 time-as-public-health-control if pre-authorized in your HACCP plan.
Items above 41 F more than 4 hours: discard. Document the discard list with weights and product codes for NSLP commodity reporting.
Pivot to the contingency menu the district pre-approved: shelf-stable, frozen-from-stock, or pre-made fresh-fill items. NSLP-compliant alternatives keep the meal-pattern requirement intact.
Notify nutrition services central office. Notify the school principal. Notify the FDACS regional office only if the situation escalates to public health concern; routine equipment failures don't require regulator notification but the records do.
Suncoast service contract customers: dispatch is already inbound. Demand-only customers: call the after-hours line, expect arrival within the response target your contract specifies.
If equipment cannot be returned to service for 24+ hours, plan rented temporary refrigeration. A 20-foot reefer trailer rental in Tampa Bay runs $250–500/day with delivery. Pre-arrange the relationship before the failure, not after.
Failure time, time of last verified normal reading, product disposition log, contingency menu deployment log, contractor arrival time, return-to-service time, return-to-spec time, calibrated-probe verification at return.
Districts on ArcticOS see this assembled automatically from continuous monitoring + work-order data. Paper-records districts assemble it manually after the fact, with predictable gaps.
Within one week, run a post-event review. Why did the unit fail? Was there warning signal in the prior month's records that should have triggered service? Update the asset-condition rating and the next-PM date.
If the unit failed and was past 12 years old with prior repair history, this is the moment to put it in next year's capital plan rather than authorize another rebuild.
Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco districts each have a contingency-menu protocol; if yours doesn't, write one. The most common emergency we see is a Monday-morning failure following a weekend without continuous monitoring, where Friday's compressor symptom went unseen for 60 hours.
ColdSentry continuous probes plus weekend alerting close that gap.
Walk-in air temperature above 45 F for 30+ minutes, or product temperature above 41 F at any time, triggers verification and possible contingency response.
Routine equipment failure with no public health impact does not require regulator notification. Maintain the record for the next inspection. Public health concern (suspected outbreak, deliberate contamination, etc.) does require notification.
Only if it is a pre-approved part of your HACCP plan. You cannot apply it retroactively for the first time during an event.
Service contract customers have specific response targets agreed in writing by site tier and severity. Demand-only customers should expect 4–12 hour windows in Tampa Bay depending on time of day.
Suncoast Cold Systems handles exactly this kind of commercial refrigeration issue across Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Brandon, Riverview, Temple Terrace, and Wesley Chapel. 24/7 dispatch. Licensed Class A A/C Contractor (FL #CAC1824642), EPA 608 Universal, OSHA 30 Construction.
Six causes ranked when the cafeteria walk-in drifts above 41 F.
What 7 CFR 210 expects from your refrigeration records.
The math on PM versus demand for a Tampa Bay district refrigeration fleet.