“Food-grade” is one of the most used words in warehouse marketing and one of the least defined. There is no federal licence with that name. When a warehouse in Atlanta, or anywhere in Georgia, calls itself food-grade, it is describing a combination of things: registration, certification, temperature control, traceability and day-to-day discipline. Each of those can be checked before a single pallet moves.
This is the checklist we would use if we were choosing a warehouse for our own product.
Food-grade is a description, not a licence
What stands behind the word falls into three layers.
The first is regulatory. Facilities that hold food for consumption in the United States are generally required to register with the FDA and to renew that registration every two years.
The second is independent certification. Food buyers usually look for a certificate to a scheme recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), such as SQF, audited by an accredited certification body.
The third is operational. It covers how the building is actually run: temperature control, pest control, sanitation, separating food from non-food, and records that let you trace a lot in minutes rather than days.
A warehouse can have the first layer without the other two. The six checks below cover all three.
Check 1: A current FDA food facility registration
Ask for the facility’s FDA registration and confirm it is current. Registrations are renewed in a window that runs from October 1 to December 31 of even-numbered years, which includes the final quarter of 2026. A registration that has not been renewed is treated as expired.
This takes minutes to answer. A warehouse that cannot answer it quickly has told you something about how the rest of its compliance is managed.
Check 2: Read the certificate, not the logo
A logo on a website proves very little. Ask for the certificate itself and check four things:
- Scope. For a warehouse, the scope should cover storage and distribution. SQF, for example, publishes a separate Food Safety Code for Storage and Distribution. A certificate issued for a different scope does not cover warehousing.
- Site. The address on the certificate should be the building your product will sit in, not a head office or a sister facility.
- Expiry date and certification body. Both should be printed on the certificate. Note the expiry so you can ask for the renewal when it comes due.
- Edition. Check which edition of the code the site was audited against.
GFSI-benchmarked certification matters because it is what many retail and foodservice buyers ask for from every site that handles their product, storage included.
Check 3: Temperature zones that match your product
Dry, chilled and frozen storage are three different operations. Ask for the capacity of each zone, not just the building’s total square footage. A large building with a small freezer is a dry warehouse with a freezer in it.
Then ask about the gaps between zones. Where is product staged at receiving and at loading? How long can it sit on the dock? How are temperatures recorded, and who reviews them? Temperature is lost far more often during handoffs than inside the cold room itself, as we cover in Cold Chain for Food Exports.
Check 4: Traceability you can test
Ask the warehouse to run a mock recall on one of your lots, or to show you the most recent one it ran. You want to see how quickly it can tell you which lot codes were received, where each pallet is now, and what has already shipped.
This is about to matter more. FDA’s Food Traceability Rule adds recordkeeping requirements for foods on its Food Traceability List, which includes cheeses, shell eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood and ready-to-eat deli salads. The compliance date is July 20, 2028. Some large retailers have already set their own supplier traceability requirements ahead of that date. A warehouse whose lot tracking lives on paper will find both hard to keep up with.
Check 5: Sanitation, pest control and separation
Ask to see the master sanitation schedule and the pest-control programme, including the most recent service reports. Then walk the building. Look at the dock seals, at the floor beneath the racking, and at where cleaning chemicals and non-food items are stored relative to food.
If your product contains major allergens, or must be kept away from them, ask how the warehouse segregates it. Ask too how damaged cases are handled.
Transport belongs in this check as well. FDA’s sanitary transportation rule places responsibilities on shippers, loaders, carriers and receivers. Ask how the warehouse inspects trailers before loading and what happens when one fails inspection.
Check 6: Value-added work inside the same food-safety system
Many food 3PL relationships go beyond storage, into relabelling, date coding, stickering and building mixed pallets. Every one of those steps touches product, so every one should sit inside the same certified food-safety system as storage.
Ask whether the value-added area is within the certification scope, and how label changes are approved and checked before release. Mistakes here tend to surface later, at a customer’s dock or at a border, when they are most expensive to fix. Our note on multi-language labelling covers where those errors usually start.
How our Lawrenceville facility measures up
Chihade International has been in business since 1979. Since 2012 it has operated its own facility in Lawrenceville, Georgia, in metro Atlanta. The facility has:
- 64,000 sq ft under one roof: 8,000 sq ft frozen, 16,000 sq ft chilled and 40,000 sq ft dry
- 22 dock doors
- SQF certification to the Storage and Distribution code, Edition 9
- a USDA inspector on site
- a HACCP-based food-safety programme
- a Certified Angus Beef licence
The same building handles storage, labelling, consolidation and export documentation, working with products from more than 300 U.S. manufacturers. See the facility and our quality control approach.
If you are comparing food-grade warehouses in the Atlanta area, request a 3PL quote and put any of the questions above to us directly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a licence called “food-grade warehouse”?
No. “Food-grade” is an industry description. What you can verify is the facility’s FDA food facility registration, its independent certification, such as SQF, and how the building is actually run.
Does a warehouse that only stores packaged food need FDA registration?
Generally, yes. Facilities that hold food for consumption in the United States are required to register with FDA and renew every two years. Some categories of business are exempt, so check FDA’s current guidance for your situation.
What is the difference between HACCP and SQF?
HACCP is a method: identify food-safety hazards and control them at critical points. SQF is a certification programme built on HACCP principles, and a site is audited against it by an accredited, independent body.
When does FDA’s food traceability rule take effect?
The compliance date is July 20, 2028. The rule applies to foods on FDA’s Food Traceability List. It also applies to foods that contain a listed food as an ingredient, when that ingredient stays in the form in which it is listed.
Can one warehouse handle dry, chilled and frozen product?
Yes, if it has a dedicated zone for each. Ask for the capacity of each zone separately, and how product is moved between zones and across the dock.
Where to go next
- Third-Party Logistics in Atlanta, Georgia: the facility, its services and a quote form
- Warehouse Services: storage, handling and value-added work
- Quality Control: how food safety is managed on site
- Our Facility: a closer look at the Lawrenceville building
- Cold Chain for Food Exports: Where Temperature Is Actually Lost
- What a Food Export Warehouse Actually Does
- Export Services: for manufacturers shipping overseas
Regulatory requirements change. Confirm current requirements with FDA and your certification body before you ship.