BRCGS grades are the public letter scores a site earns on a BRCGS Global Standard Food Safety audit, running from AA (best) down to D, with a "+" suffix when the grade was earned on an unannounced audit. The grade is set entirely by the number and severity of nonconformities the auditor raises.
Buyers use the grade as a shortcut, "grade B or better" is a common supplier requirement, so the letter on your certificate carries commercial weight beyond the pass/fail line. This guide covers the current Issue 9 grade ladder, how nonconformities drive the grade, what the "+" means, the difference between announced and unannounced audits, and what pushes a site down the ladder.
What are BRCGS grades?
BRCGS grades are a graded pass. Unlike most food safety schemes, which are simple pass/fail, the BRCGS Global Standard Food Safety issues a letter grade that appears in the BRCGS directory and tells buyers how cleanly you passed. The ladder runs AA, A, B, C, D, and below D there is no certificate.
Two things sit alongside the letter. A "+" suffix marks a grade earned on an unannounced audit. And the grade drives your re-audit cycle: the top grades keep the standard 12-month certificate, while the bottom grades put you on a 6-month leash. The grade is not a subjective auditor impression, it is a direct arithmetic function of how many nonconformities you collected and how serious they were.
What is the current BRCGS issue?
Issue 9 is the version audited today. BRCGS published the Global Standard Food Safety Issue 9 in August 2022, and audits against it began February 1, 2023. BRCGS ran a public consultation on the next revision that closed in early 2026, so a new issue is in development, but until BRCGS publishes it and sets an audit start date, Issue 9 is the standard, and the Issue 9 grade rules below are the ones in force. Confirm the current version on brcgs.com before you plan an audit.
How do nonconformities drive the grade?
Your grade is a count. The auditor classifies every finding into one of three severities, and the totals map to a grade band.
- Critical. A failure that presents a real food safety or legal risk, or a fundamental breakdown of the system. A single critical ends the audit's certification prospects, no certificate, regardless of everything else.
- Major. A substantial failure to meet a requirement, or enough doubt about conformity that product safety could be affected. A major against a fundamental clause is also an automatic no-certificate.
- Minor. A finding where conformity is not fully met but there is no significant doubt about product safety.
The counts then map to the ladder. Fewer minors and no majors earns AA; the more you accumulate, the further down you slide.
| Grade | Nonconformities | Re-audit cycle |
|---|---|---|
| AA / AA+ | ≤ 5 minor | 12 months |
| A / A+ | 6–10 minor | 12 months |
| B / B+ | 11–16 minor, or 1 major + up to 10 minor | 12 months |
| C / C+ | 17–24 minor, or 1 major + 11–16 minor, or 2 major + up to 10 minor | 6 months |
| D / D+ | 25–30 minor, or 1 major + 17–24 minor, or 2 major + 11–16 minor | 6 months |
| No certificate | Any critical, a major against a fundamental clause, or beyond the D thresholds |
What does the "+" mean on a BRCGS grade?
The "+" marks a grade earned on an unannounced audit. AA+ is the same nonconformity result as AA, five or fewer minors, but achieved when the auditor arrived without notice, so it carries more credibility with buyers.
An announced audit is booked with you in advance. An unannounced audit arrives without warning inside a defined window, so it shows the plant as it actually runs rather than as it was polished for audit week. In line with GFSI benchmarking, BRCGS requires certificated sites to take at least one unannounced audit in every three-year period; sites can also opt into the unannounced program voluntarily each year to carry the "+" continuously. The nonconformity thresholds are identical either way, the only difference is the notice and the suffix.
What is a good BRCGS grade?
AA is the top grade and the one to aim for; in practice, B or better keeps almost every buyer happy. Many retailers and brand owners set a contractual minimum, commonly "grade B or above", and treat C or D as a supplier on notice, partly because those grades signal a weaker system and partly because they trigger the 6-month re-audit cycle.
That 6-month cycle is the real sting of a low grade. A C or D does not just look worse in the directory; it doubles your audit frequency and cost, and it puts the site under scrutiny that is hard to shake until the next full audit resets the grade. Sites treat slipping to C the way a plant treats a customer complaint spike, as something to fix now, not next year.
One more nuance buyers watch: the grade is a snapshot of a single audit, not a running average. A plant that has held AA for years can post a B or C after one rough audit, an equipment failure, a staffing gap, a run of record findings, and the directory shows the new letter immediately. That volatility is exactly why the smart move is to keep the system audit-ready every day rather than to peak for audit week.
What pushes a site down the grade ladder?
The findings that generate the most minors, and the occasional major, are remarkably consistent across categories, and almost all of them are follow-through problems rather than food-science problems:
- Allergen controls that live on paper, not on the line. A documented allergen program that the changeover cleaning does not actually follow is a classic major.
- Record gaps and backfills. Missed checks, logs completed after the fact, and suspiciously uniform handwriting read as a monitoring failure.
- Internal audits that never find anything. Auditors treat a spotless internal-audit history as a weak program, not a strong plant.
- Slow traceability. A trace exercise that takes days instead of hours, or a mass balance that does not reconcile, raises doubt across the whole system.
- A culture plan written the week before. Issue 9 requires a defined food safety culture plan with activities, measurement, and review, assembled in a hurry, it shows.
Notice that none of these are about the underlying food safety science. They are about whether the system runs every day the way the documents say it does, which is precisely what an unannounced audit is designed to catch.
What is the stat picture, from primary sources?
Facts worth pinning, from BRCGS and GFSI directly:
- Global Standard Food Safety Issue 9 published August 2022; audits began February 1, 2023 (BRCGS).
- Grade thresholds: AA ≤ 5 minors; A 6–10; B 11–16 or one major; C and D beyond that on a 6-month certificate; any critical, or a major against a fundamental clause, means no certificate.
- The "+" suffix denotes a grade earned on an unannounced audit; at least one unannounced audit is required in every three-year cycle.
- Corrective-action evidence for nonconformities is normally due within 28 days of the audit before a certificate is issued.
- BRCGS Food Safety is recognized by GFSI which drives the unannounced-audit expectation.
How do you protect your grade year-round?
The plants that hold AA or A are the ones where audit day looks like every other day. Since the grade is a count of findings, protecting it means removing the conditions that generate findings, chiefly the record gaps and backfills that pile up minors and the occasional major.
That is where moving checks, logs, and corrective actions off paper pays back directly. When CCP and quality records are captured at the station and time-stamped as they happen, a missed check is visible the same shift instead of at the next internal audit, allergen changeover records cannot be reconstructed after the fact, and a traceability request is a query rather than a binder hunt. Harmony builds exactly that layer for food and beverage plants, turning paper checks and quality logs into live, searchable data on top of the systems you already run, no rip-and-replace. One manufacturer serving premium spirits brands replaced paper production logging entirely and automated its daily reporting; that same always-current record foundation is what turns an unannounced audit from a scramble into a normal Tuesday. If you are still choosing a scheme, start with the BRCGS certification overview or compare it against SQF and the wider GFSI ladder. Underneath all of them, the CCP decision tree is doing the same job.