What is it that you like best about your favorite restaurant? No doubt the good food, good service, and inviting atmosphere come to mind. If you go there often enough, you’ve probably made some special memories there.
If that’s what your restaurant is like or what you aspire it to be, then paying adequate attention to the cleanliness of your operation is vital. Even if your patrons aren’t privy to the appearance and goings-on in your kitchen, if you don’t keep it along with all other areas of your restaurant clean, it’s only a matter of time before they or the health department find out. With regard to your patrons, if they learn it’s unsanitary, they’ll stop coming. And if the health department gets wind, they could shut you down.
So How Often Do You Need to Clean?
The short answer to the question above is all the time, and constantly. But while a lot of cleaning tasks may be obvious, others can easily be overlooked. And as noted above, how often or diligently you should undertake certain cleaning tasks will also be dictated by local and state health authorities.
Keep a Clean Kitchen
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When cleaning your commercial kitchen, it’s important to take on such tasks with the health and safety of your patrons and employees always in the forefront. Keep in mind also that a health inspector could visit at any time. Don’t ever cut corners.
Food prep areas and other surfaces that food comes in contact with, meat and cheese slicers, utensils, and cooking appliances such as deep fryers should be cleaned after each food service. In addition, grease on kitchen hoods and exhaust fans should also be removed regularly. Not attending to such buildup is not only unsanitary, but it also poses a serious fire hazard.
Wiping down your appliances and walls, cleaning out grease traps, and keeping floors free of grease and debris should be part of your daily or post-shift cleaning schedule. Proper and regular trash disposal will keep vermin away.
Beyond your shift and daily cleaning routines, there are many other tasks that should be kept up with on a weekly, monthly, or less frequent schedule.
Keep a Clean Restaurant
While a clean kitchen is essential, your front-of-house including the reception and dining areas deserves attention when it comes to cleanliness. Vacated tables after meals are finished should be quickly bussed and wiped down, menus wiped clean. After the restaurant closes for the day, floors should be swept or vacuumed. Windows should be cleaned.
Your restrooms should also get regular attention throughout the day to make sure the areas are kept sanitary and well-stocked. And don’t neglect your office and employee break-room areas.
The Value of Professional Cleaning Services
As you well know, there are some cleanup tasks that cannot wait ten minutes to be tended to, let alone a week or a month. But there are others that can easily fit into a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual, or annual schedule.
They Take On the Tough Jobs
Power-washing walls and ceilings, degreasing vent hoods and exhaust fans, cleaning and deliming ice machines and dishwashers, cleaning under and behind ovens and stoves, and steam-cleaning carpets are some of the typical tasks that fall into this less frequent cleaning category. All are necessary, but they are also the types of jobs that may require special skills or equipment and supplies your restaurant may not have. They can also be time-consuming to undertake.
It’s What They Do
When you expect your chef or your waitstaff to delime the ice machine on a monthly basis or disassemble a vent hood and degrease the unit, rest assured they won’t be happy. These are not likely tasks they would expect to do. As a result, they may not put their all into the work. With a professional cleaning service, however, these are tasks that are right up their alley. A good cleaning company will do them regularly, thoroughly, and correctly.
They Free You Up To Do What You Do
Hiring a skilled, reliable, and trustworthy restaurant cleaning service company to have in your corner on a monthly, quarterly, or biannual schedule can take care of major cleaning tasks without your restaurant ever having to skip a beat. Major (and even minor) cleaning can be arranged for set times after hours with everything looking shiny and new when you open up the next day.
Most importantly, finding such a company can be worth its weight in gold as it will allow you and your team to focus on what you do best — providing good food, good service, and an inviting atmosphere where your patrons will most certainly make some special memories of their own.
DO YOU OWN A RESTAURANT IN PENNSYLVANIA?
CALL (800) 851-0806 FOR YOUR FREE QUOTE