Retail and Artisan Bakery risk assessment (NSW)
Secure your legal baseline with a diagnostic tool authored by a Certified Industrial Hygienist: 44 hazards and 217 controls for hot bread shops, artisan and sourdough bakeries and bakery cafés, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
21 activities, 44 hazards, 217 controls. One industry, one login.
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The 21 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (22 hazards), Process Safety (6) and Occupational Hygiene (16). 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 Retail and artisan bakery 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 retail and artisan bakery business that has not managed flour dust as a respiratory sensitiser, powdered enzymes and bread improvers, and combustion products from gas ovens is exposed to regulatory action, and those are the hazards a general template handles worst.
Flour dust at the mixer, divider and bench, powdered enzymes and improvers, dough sheeter and bread slicer entrapment, doughnut fryers, early starts and working alone.
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.
Retail and Artisan Bakery
Workplace risk assessment for hot bread shops, artisan and sourdough bakeries and bakery cafés in New South Wales: 21 activities, 44 hazards and 217 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.
- ✓44 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
- ✓217 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, 44 hazards, 217 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 retail and artisan bakery
A sample of the 44 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.
Fire spreading to the bakehouse, severe burns. Process Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Burns, smoke inhalation, fatality; loss of premises. 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.
Crushing and degloving injuries to fingers, hands and arms. 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.
A bakehouse that runs on flour from three in the morning
In a hot bread shop or sourdough bakery, flour is handled at almost every station. Sacks are tipped into the spiral mixer, dough is dusted as it runs through the divider, moulder and sheeter, bannetons and tins are floured by hand, and vacuum and sifter bags are emptied at the end of the shift. The early start means most of this happens in a closed bakehouse before the front doors open and fresh air comes in.
The health liability sits with flour and improvers. Flour dust sensitises the airways and causes baker's asthma and rhinitis that may not go away. From 1 December 2026 flour (cereal) dust gets its own WEL of 0.5 mg/m3, 8-hour TWA, inhalable fraction, well below the 4 mg/m3 grain dust figure that bakeries have long used as a yardstick. Powdered improvers containing fungal alpha-amylase are an even stronger sensitiser, often at lower doses than flour, and there is no Australian WEL for that enzyme to lean on.
What distinguishes an artisan or retail bakery from a café is the depth of plant. Bread slicers, sheeters, dividers, bowl lifts and doughnut fryers all run in a space where the baker also serves customers, and noise from mixers and sheeters adds a hearing question a smaller kitchen rarely faces.
The machines and records an inspector starts with
Bread slicers and sheeters are where the assessment starts you. On the slicer it asks whether the blade guard and infeed cover are interlocked to stop the blades when opened, and whether the emergency stop and interlocks are checked before use. On the sheeter it asks the same of the roller guards, plus an emergency stop or trip bar at both ends. Dividers and moulders need hopper and roller guards with interlocks, and bowl lifts and tippers need hold-to-run controls with the operator able to see the bowl.
Isolation is the next line of questioning, because most bakery amputations happen during cleaning and jam clearing. Each machine should be lockable off or unplugged in view, under a procedure with tags or locks. Cold rooms need a working internal release and a tested alarm, and anyone baking alone before dawn needs a check-in with a set response.
For dust, the assessment asks how improvers are weighed, how the bakehouse is cleaned, whether flour has ever been sampled, and whether bakers can report symptoms early.
What a bakery's first answers usually reveal
Most bakeries score well on ovens and poorly on dust. Improver is scooped straight from the pack onto the scale, the divider hopper is filled from a sack held at shoulder height, and the bakehouse is brushed down with a broom or blown off with compressed air before the retail staff arrive. Nobody has measured exposure, and the only record of a cough is a sick day.
Green ratings come from engineering. Interlocked roller guards on the sheeter, guarded bowl lifts and tippers with hold-to-run controls, a mixer with slow-start and a bowl-down interlock on bowl-lift models, oven steam vented before the rack oven door opens, oven loaders or long-handled peels, and flour delivered to a bulk bin or bought in smaller bags all count for far more than a laminated reminder.
NOT RATED looks like this: a small loaf jams in the bread slicer, and someone reaches in to clear it without switching the slicer off at the isolator. That practice is prohibited, so the bread slicer hazard cannot be given a residual rating until jams and blade cleaning always happen with the slicer isolated. A sheeter guard lifted to free dough while the rollers turn does the same to the sheeter.
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.
- ✓Hot bread shops, artisan and sourdough bakeries and bakery cafés
- ✓Businesses running spiral mixers, dividers and moulders, dough sheeters, bread slicers and doughnut fryers
- ✓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.