I worked in several eateries growing up. Pizza, fried chicken, and buffett style. First off I do not remember the temps but the danger zone was around 50 to 120 degrees.
How do you know who the manager is? Easy its the person with the shirt pocket thermometer sticking into everything.
Temps are taken and logged at regular intervals. In some cases such as simmering sauces we had thermometers in them all the time. They had a clip thing to keep them in place. At the fried chicked place there was a special digital thermometer for the oil.
There are all sorts of rules about such things as how long food can be under the heat lamps before being thrown out and the like. Some of those rules are quality control not safety ever get a side of fries that been sitting to long?
All fridges and freezers have thermometers built in and many have overtemp alarms. Food warmers also have low temp alarms.
Even dishwashers have rules. The final rinse temp must be at least 180 degrees. We get that with a booster heater. It takes the 140 degree water from the normal water heater and makes it 190.
This stuff IS checked by food inspectors.
All food that is not served is required to be labeled with time and day. Thats so it cannot be reheated twice like the first post here stated. In fact if I remember correctly it had to be labeled with its expiration date. Varied depending on what it was.
Round here we got "Taco Trucks" they got little ovens inside with premade tacos and they drive around the job sites. They are required to have a permit and be inspected. I have heard of unpermited ones getting pulled over and getting in trouble by storing the tacos in a stryofoam cooler.
This is all off the top of my head, let me know if you have any more questions about this. Suffice it to say that food safety is taken seriously. I myself remeber throwing out food that was NOT bad but was a few degrees off. It simply is not worth the risk.
