Pizza and Restaurant Kitchen risk assessment (NSW)
Secure your legal baseline with a diagnostic tool authored by a Certified Industrial Hygienist: 38 hazards and 188 controls for pizza shops and restaurant kitchens that make their own dough, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
21 activities, 38 hazards, 188 controls. One industry, one login.
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The 21 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (19 hazards), Process Safety (6) and Occupational Hygiene (13). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓The inherent hazard register in Word: every hazard here with what could go wrong, the possible consequence and its starting risk rating, to read before the walk and share with the people you consult.
✓Access to the Pizza and restaurant kitchen online calculator, tied to the email address used at checkout. Answer Yes, No or N/A on a phone or tablet; untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your checklist, results and report.
✓A finished Word report (.docx) with every hazard, your answers, the residual risk and your prioritised Action Plan already in it — to print, sign and keep with your safety records.
✓The health surveillance pathway: when health monitoring is required, a medical referral form for the registered medical practitioner, and a worker respiratory symptom questionnaire.
✓An inspection readiness checklist for a SafeWork NSW visit, and an annual review template.
What this pack is
Generic safety templates leave you with most of the work and all of the liability. A pizza and restaurant kitchen business that has not managed flour and semolina dust, wood-fired oven smoke and ash, and hot oil is exposed to regulatory action, and those are the hazards a general template handles worst.
Flour and semolina dust at the dough bench, wood-fired oven smoke and ash, hot oil and frying, food slicers and knives, late-night work and delivery riding.
Each business type here is a complete risk assessment for one kind of kitchen, with the hazards and their starting ratings already identified by a Certified Industrial Hygienist. You answer Yes, No or N/A to the controls, and the calculator works out your residual risk, builds the Action Plan and produces the finished report.
Pizza and Restaurant Kitchen
Workplace risk assessment for pizza shops and restaurant kitchens that make their own dough in New South Wales: 21 activities, 38 hazards and 188 controls across safety, process safety and occupational hygiene. Completed in the online calculator, which works out control scores, residual risk and a prioritised Action Plan and produces a finished Word report to print and sign.
- ✓38 hazards across 21 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated — the inherent hazard register, in Word, is yours to download at once
- ✓188 controls listed for you, ranked by the hierarchy of control — you answer Yes, No or N/A in the online calculator
- ✓Colour-coded residual risk and a prioritised Action Plan, worked out for you; air monitoring goes on the plan wherever it is a missing control
- ✓A finished Word report to print and sign — attach it to your hazard register and you are audit-ready
- ✓The health surveillance pathway with its medical referral form and worker symptom questionnaire, an inspection readiness checklist and an annual review template
21 activities, 38 hazards, 188 controls. One industry, one login.
Secure checkout via Stripe. Sign in and start as soon as the payment goes through.
Run more than one kind of kitchen? See every business type
The most serious hazards in pizza and restaurant kitchen
A sample of the 38 hazards in this assessment, each shown with its consequence and the starting risk rating given by a Certified Industrial Hygienist before any controls are counted. The controls themselves are in the calculator.
Flour dust is a respiratory sensitiser: baker's asthma and rhinitis, which can become permanent. Once sensitised, a worker can react to very small exposures. From 1 December 2026 flour (cereal) dust has its own WEL of 0.5 mg/m3 (8-hour TWA, inhalable) - a new entry, much lower than the 4 mg/m3 grain dust figure many bakeries have used as their reference. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4D.
Flour dust is a respiratory sensitiser: baker's asthma and rhinitis, which can become permanent. Once sensitised, a worker can react to very small exposures. From 1 December 2026 flour (cereal) dust has its own WEL of 0.5 mg/m3 (8-hour TWA, inhalable) - a new entry, much lower than the 4 mg/m3 grain dust figure many bakeries have used as their reference. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4D.
Flue and chimney fires spreading to the building. Process Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Fire spreading to the bakehouse, severe burns. Process Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Crushed or amputated hands and arms, fractures; mixers have caused fatal and life-changing injuries in bakeries. Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Deep lacerations and amputation of fingers. Safety · inherent risk 4C.
How one hazard is rated
Hazard S1.1 — manual handling of flour and sugar sacks — starts at 3D, rated before any controls are counted. The calculator lists 6 controls for it, from elimination and extraction at the source down to PPE, monitoring and emergency arrangements. You answer Yes, No or N/A for each on the floor. Once the last one is answered it works out the control score, applies any severity reduction earned by physical controls, and shows the residual risk as RED, YELLOW or GREEN. Every control you answered No to goes into your Action Plan, most urgent and most effective first, ready for a responsible person and a due date.
Semolina on the bench, smoke at the oven mouth
A pizza kitchen makes dough every day, and every batch starts with a sack of flour tipped into a spiral mixer. Balls are divided, rounded and pressed, then stretched on a bench thrown with flour and semolina so they slide off the peel. That constant dusting keeps a haze over the dough station through service, and the cook stretching bases breathes it for hours.
Flour dust is a respiratory sensitiser, and baker's asthma or rhinitis picked up at the dough bench can stay with a cook for life. From 1 December 2026 flour (cereal) dust has its own WEL of 0.5 mg/m3 averaged over eight hours as inhalable dust, a long way under the 4 mg/m3 grain dust value many kitchens have relied on. The heaviest bursts come from sack tipping and from dry sweeping after close, when settled flour and semolina go straight back up.
The wood-fired oven is what separates a pizzeria from a bakery. It produces carbon monoxide, wood smoke and ash at the oven mouth, and ash removal adds a hot, dusty task at the end of the night. Gas decks add their own carbon monoxide, fryers add hot oil, and outside the kitchen the delivery rider carries some of the highest injury risk in the business.
What an inspector asks to see at the pass
Machinery comes first. The assessment walks you through the spiral mixer bowl guard and its interlock, the daily test of that interlock and emergency stop, hopper and roller guards on the divider and rounder, and press guards or two-hand controls on the dough press. For the meat and vegetable slicer, the questions are whether the blade guard and carriage pusher are fitted and used, and whether the slicer is isolated before the blade is wiped.
The oven and the night shift follow. Is ash removed only once cooled, into a lidded metal container kept away from combustibles? Is firewood stored clear of the oven, and is the flue kept free of creosote and soot? Do the people closing up alone have a check-in with a set response if they miss it, and can every cold room be opened from inside?
Delivery is part of the workplace too. Expect questions on whether drivers and riders are licensed and inducted, and whether they can report an unsafe address.
The usual picture after service
Pizzerias tend to answer Yes on the mixer and oven basics and No on almost everything to do with dust and late-night work. Sacks go straight from the delivery van to the mixer by hand, the bench is dusted from a tub of semolina at shoulder height, and the floor is swept dry once the last order leaves. The rider induction is a chat, not a record.
The top-tier controls that shift a rating are mostly equipment. Hopper and roller guards with interlocks on the rounder, press guards on the dough press, a fryer with an automatic basket lift, oil filtered through a pump only after it cools, long-handled peels that keep arms out of the oven mouth, and flour in smaller bags or a bulk bin with a sack trolley all score well above signs and toolbox talks.
NOT RATED looks like this: at the end of a Friday service the slicer blade is wiped down while it is still spinning, to save the time of unplugging it. That is a prohibited practice, so the food slicer hazard stays unrated until the slicer is isolated and guarded for cleaning every time. A missing bowl guard interlock on the dough mixer has the same effect on that machine.
How your controls are scored
Not generic advice — the specific, hierarchy-of-controls measures written into the pack, matched to how these assets actually fail.
Built for the people who do this work
If you operate, maintain or contract to these assets in NSW, this pack is written for your duties.
- ✓Pizza shops and restaurant kitchens that make their own dough
- ✓Businesses running dough mixers, wood-fired and gas ovens, fryers, slicers and delivery riding
- ✓Owners and managers who need a risk assessment that stands up to a SafeWork NSW visit
- ✓Safety coordinators covering several sites or several brands
- ✓Businesses whose insurer, landlord, franchisor or client has asked for a documented assessment
- ✓Supervisors inducting apprentices and casual staff onto kitchen hazards
Authored to the codes and the law
The Codes of Practice and Australian Standards these documents are measured against, and the legislation behind them.
- §Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW)
- §Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025 (NSW)
- §Workplace exposure standards for airborne contaminants (Safe Work Australia)
- §Managing risks of hazardous chemicals in the workplace — Code of Practice (SafeWork NSW)
- §Managing risks of plant in the workplace — Code of Practice (SafeWork NSW)
- §Managing the work environment and facilities — Code of Practice (SafeWork NSW)
Frequently asked questions
Add an in-house CIH risk assessment review
Complete your risk assessment using our digital engine, then have our in-house Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) and Full Member of the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists (MAIOH) review your specific results to ensure bulletproof compliance.
Post-completion expert review
Not sure if you categorised your site’s controls correctly? Complete your online assessment and send us the generated report. Our in-house experts will review your residual risk scores, validate your “N/A” selections, and ensure your action plan adequately addresses your highest liabilities (like hexavalent chromium or LEL environments) before you sign off.
- Scope
- Remote CIH and MAIOH review of your completed calculator report and hazard register.
- Turnaround
- 3–5 business days.
- Pricing
- Remote review is billed at an hourly rate of $250 AUD/hour (total quote based on the number of sections reviewed).
Download it, score it online, sign it.
Read the hazard register, walk the kitchen with the calculator open, and download the finished .docx report with your Action Plan already inside it. Print it, sign it off, and you are audit-ready for this kitchen.
Price in AUD, no GST charged · Jurisdiction: New South Wales — WHS Act 2011, WHS Regulation 2025 and SafeWork NSW Codes of Practice applied
This is a generic risk assessment for a typical business of this kind, to support your due diligence — completing it is not compliance in itself. You must answer it for your own site, consult your workers, put the missing controls in place, and get competent advice where it says so — exposure monitoring, for example, is work for an occupational hygienist. The limits are set out at the front of every report.