Resources · Inspections and grades

How to Pass an SNHD Health Inspection: The Complete Checklist

You pass an SNHD inspection by finishing with 10 demerits or fewer and no violations repeated from your last inspection. That earns the A. And almost all of those demerits come from a short list of everyday habits: handwashing, cold holding, cooling, cross-contamination, date marking, and sanitizing. This checklist walks your kitchen the way an inspector actually walks it, station by station, and explains why each item matters. A rule your crew understands is a rule your crew keeps.

First, how the scoring works

Southern Nevada Health District inspections run on demerits. An A is 0 to 10 demerits, a B is 11 to 20, a C is 21 to 40, and 41 or more closes the facility until the problems are corrected. Critical violations, the ones tied directly to foodborne illness, carry 5 demerits each. Major violations carry 3. Repeat the identical violation from your last inspection and your grade drops even if the point total looks fine. I break down the whole system, including grade card QR codes and the public inspection records, in SNHD Inspection Grades Explained.

Here's the math that matters: two critical violations is 10 demerits. You still have your A, barely. Add one major violation, one unlabeled spray bottle or one out-of-date pan of cooked rice, and you're at 13 and holding a B. Most downgrades I saw as an inspector weren't disasters. They were three or four small habits failing on the same morning.

So don't think of this checklist as a cleanup list for inspection day. Inspections in Clark County are unannounced. Think of it as the way your kitchen runs every day, and the inspection takes care of itself.

Station 1: The handwashing sinks

Why it matters: hands move germs faster than anything else in a kitchen, and handwashing is one of the first things an inspector observes, often before you know the inspection has started. A handsink that's blocked, empty, or being used as a dump sink tells the inspector how the whole shift has been going.

• Every handsink is fully accessible. No cutting boards over it, no bus tubs in it, no cart parked in front of it.
• Soap and paper towels are stocked at every handsink, every shift. An empty dispenser is a violation all by itself.
• Hot water works and arrives quickly.
• The handsink is used only for washing hands. Not for dumping drinks, not for rinsing wiping cloths, not for thawing shrimp.
• The crew actually washes: after handling raw meat, after touching their face or phone, after taking out trash, and every time gloves change. Gloves over unwashed hands don't count.

Station 2: Cold holding, the one most kitchens miss

Why it matters: bacteria multiply fastest between 41°F and 135°F, which is why SNHD requires cold food held at 41°F or below. This is the most commonly cited issue in Clark County: in SNHD's 2021 Risk Factor Study, 65.7% of restaurants were out of compliance on cold holding. It's also very fixable, because the failure is almost always the same: a cold table working too hard during a rush.

• Probe the food, not the air. The thermometer on the door tells you what the unit thinks; a thin-tip probe in the top of the pan tells you the truth.
• Check the top layer of the cold table mid-rush. That's where product warms first, and that's exactly where an inspector will put the probe.
• Don't overfill pans past the fill line. Product stacked above the rail sits at room temperature.
• Walk-in door closes and seals. Torn gaskets and propped doors turn a 38°F walk-in into a 45°F one by 1pm.
• Every refrigeration unit has a working thermometer inside it.
• Thaw under refrigeration or under cold running water, never in a bucket on the floor or in the prep sink overnight.

Station 3: The hot line

Why it matters: cooking is the kill step. It's the one moment where the bacteria that came in on the raw product are destroyed, which is why cook temperatures are critical violations when they're missed.

• Poultry and reheated foods reach 165°F. Ground meats reach 155°F. Whole cuts, fish, and eggs cooked to order reach 145°F.
• Hot holding stays at 135°F or above. The steam table holds temperature; it does not create it. Reheat on the stove or in the oven to 165°F first, then hold.
• A thin-tip probe thermometer lives on the line, and the crew uses it. Cooks who temp their food never argue with an inspector's number.
• Calibrate the probe weekly: a cup of ice water should read 32°F. Thirty seconds, and your readings are defensible.

Station 4: Cooling, where good kitchens lose the most points

Why it matters: a deep, covered container of hot soup in the walk-in can sit in the danger zone for 12 hours, growing bacteria the whole time, and it will look perfectly fine the next day. That's why cooling has a clock: from 135°F down to 70°F within 2 hours, and down to 41°F within 6 hours total. As an inspector, I found more critical violations in cooling than almost anywhere else, because it happens after the rush, when nobody's watching.

• Cool in shallow metal pans, a few inches deep at most. Depth is the enemy; metal transfers heat, plastic insulates it.
• Use an ice bath or ice paddle for soups, sauces, rice, and beans before they go into the walk-in.
• Leave cooling food uncovered or loosely covered in the walk-in until it hits 41°F. A tight lid traps the heat in.
• Write the start time on the pan. If you can't say when it started cooling, you can't prove it made the clock.
• Log the temperatures. My free Cooling and Cold-Holding Temperature Log exists for exactly this.

Station 5: Prep tables and cross-contamination

Why it matters: raw chicken is supposed to have bacteria on it; the cook step handles that. The salad it drips onto has no kill step. Everything about cross-contamination rules comes down to that one idea: keep raw product away from anything that won't be cooked again.

• Store raw proteins below ready-to-eat food, ordered by cook temperature: whole cuts and fish above ground meats, poultry always on the bottom shelf.
• Separate cutting boards for raw proteins and produce, or a full wash-rinse-sanitize between tasks.
• Wiping cloths live in a sanitizer bucket between uses, not on the counter and not over a shoulder.
• Gloves change between raw and ready-to-eat tasks, with a handwash in between.
• No bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat food. Tongs, deli paper, or gloves.

Station 6: Date marking and storage

Why it matters: Listeria grows even at proper refrigeration temperatures. It's slow, which is why the rule is a calendar instead of a thermometer: ready-to-eat food that needs refrigeration and is held longer than 24 hours must be date marked, and used or discarded within 7 days of preparation or opening, with day one being the day it was made or opened.

• Every prepped, ready-to-eat item held overnight has a date on it. Sauces, cut greens, cooked proteins, opened deli meats, all of it.
• Pick one dating system (made-on or use-by), teach it once, and use it everywhere. Mixed systems confuse the crew and the inspector.
• First in, first out: new product goes behind old, every delivery.
• Everything stored at least 6 inches off the floor, in the walk-in and in dry storage.
• Chemicals stay in labeled containers, stored below and away from food. An unlabeled spray bottle is one of the easiest violations to prevent in the whole building.

Station 7: The dish area and sanitizer

Why it matters: a clean-looking plate can still carry what the last customer left on it. Sanitizing is the invisible step, so inspectors verify it with test strips, and your crew should too.

• Three-compartment sink runs in order: wash, rinse, sanitize, air dry. No towel drying.
• Sanitizer at the right strength: chlorine at 50 to 100 ppm, quaternary ammonia at the concentration on the product label. Too weak doesn't sanitize; too strong contaminates food-contact surfaces.
• Test strips are in the dish area and get used every time a fresh batch is mixed.
• If you run a dish machine, confirm it's actually dispensing sanitizer or hitting its final rinse temperature. Machines run out and nobody notices.
• In continuous use, food-contact surfaces and slicers get cleaned and sanitized at least every 4 hours.

Station 8: People and paperwork

Why it matters: more outbreaks trace back to sick food handlers than to almost any equipment failure. And the paperwork questions are usually the first ones the inspector asks, so this station sets the tone for the whole visit.

• Every employee holds an SNHD-issued food handler safety training card. The test is taken in person with the health district; online food handler cards from third-party Nevada providers are not accepted in Clark County.
• A Certified Food Protection Manager is on site during all hours of operation. SNHD has required this for risk category 2 through 4 establishments since May 2023, and for most restaurants that means more than one certified person.
• The crew knows the health policy: no working while vomiting, with diarrhea, or with jaundice, and cuts covered with a bandage and a glove.
• Personal drinks have a lid and straw and are stored below prep surfaces. Phones stay off the prep line.
• Your current grade card is posted where customers can see it, and your permit is current.

Make it a habit, not an event

Read this list once a month with a clipboard in your hand and it stops being a list. It becomes how your kitchen runs. That's the entire philosophy I built this practice on: explain, educate, correct, prevent. My free Monthly Self-Inspection Checklist turns this article into a 30-minute walkthrough you can do yourself, and if your crew needs the why behind these habits taught in person, that's what my on-site staff training is for.