The price on a cleaning quote is the easiest number to compare and the least useful one. Two honest quotes for the same restaurant can sit hundreds of dollars a month apart with neither company doing anything wrong, because the price isn’t what differs between them. A single column in a schedule most owners skim past is.
What’s included in a restaurant cleaning contract lives in a document called the scope of work. It’s an area by area task list with a frequency next to every task, plus a list of what’s excluded and a line naming who buys the soap. The agreement pages set the business terms. The scope of work decides what actually gets cleaned, and it’s the only part of the whole package you can hold against another company’s quote.
Written properly it runs a page or two of line items, and the difference between a strong scope and a weak one shows up in the second column.
A Restaurant Cleaning Contract Is Really Two Documents
Almost every janitorial contract you’ll be handed is an agreement with a scope of work attached to the back, usually as Exhibit A or Schedule A. They do different jobs and they fail in different ways.
The agreement governs the relationship: how long it runs, how it renews, how either side gets out, when you pay, who carries insurance, what happens in a dispute. Most contracts run twelve months with automatic renewal, and the notice window for stopping that renewal is commonly 60 to 90 days. Those clauses are worth reading closely, and we’ve covered the contract terms that decide how easily you can leave separately.
The scope of work governs the labor. It’s the part that tells a crew what to do at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, and the part your manager will point at when something didn’t get done.
Here’s the practical test. If the document you’ve been given is four tidy pages of legal language with no attached task schedule, you don’t have a cleaning contract yet. You have a payment plan. Nothing in those four pages tells anyone whether the floor drains get lifted, and nothing in them lets you compare that company to the next one.
What a Real Scope of Work Line Looks Like
Every line on a usable scope of work carries five pieces of information: the area, the task, the frequency, the standard it has to meet, and who performs it.
A weak line reads like this:
Clean kitchen floors.
A line you can actually enforce reads like this:
Kitchen and cook line floors: sweep, apply degreaser, machine or mop clean including edges, corners and under equipment on casters, squeegee to drain. Six nights per week, after close. Standard: no visible grease film, no standing water, no debris at wall junctions. Performed by contractor crew.
The second version costs more to write and settles every argument you’d otherwise have in month three. It also tells you something the first one hides, which is how often the work happens.
The Frequency Column Is Where the Money Is
Labor is nearly the whole cost of janitorial work, so frequency is nearly the whole price. Two quotes can both say “kitchen floors, degrease” and mean completely different amounts of work.
Six nights a week works out to about 26 visits a month, using the 4.33 weeks that actually fit in an average month. Twice a week is about nine. That’s a difference of 17 nights of cook line floor work, and it will never show up anywhere except the second column of the schedule.
The same gap hides in every periodic task. Filters pulled and washed weekly is 52 services a year. Filters pulled monthly is 12. Both companies can honestly tell you hood filters are included.
So when a quote comes in noticeably lower, read the frequencies before you read the total. Nine times out of ten the cheaper company isn’t cutting its margin, it’s cutting nights.
A Line by Line Restaurant Scope of Work
This is roughly what a full service restaurant scope covers when it’s written out properly. Frequencies vary with your volume, your hours and your floor plan, but the areas don’t.
| Area | On every visit | Periodic, and how often |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen floors and drains | Sweep, degrease, mop or machine scrub, edges and corners, squeegee to drain | Lift and brush floor drain covers weekly, deep scrub grout monthly |
| Cook line and equipment exteriors | Wipe fryer cabinets, range fronts, oven and salamander exteriors, backsplash | Detail behind and under equipment on casters monthly |
| Hood and filters | Wipe accessible hood exterior and drip trays | Pull, wash and replace grease filters weekly |
| Prep tables and shelving | Clean and sanitize table tops, wipe legs and cross braces | Detail shelving undersides and wall brackets monthly |
| Walk in cooler and freezer | Sweep and mop floors, wipe door handles and gaskets | Empty and wash shelving, wipe walls and fan guards monthly |
| Dish area | Wipe dish machine exterior, splash walls, sinks, floor under and behind the machine | Descale sink fixtures and sprayer monthly |
| Dining room surfaces | Table tops and bases, chair legs and rungs, booth seams, entry glass, window sills, host stand | High dust vents, light fixtures, ledges and ceiling fans monthly |
| Dining room floors | Vacuum carpet, sweep and mop hard floors, edges and under booths | Machine scrub or burnish hard floors monthly, spot treat carpet as needed |
| Bar | Under bar floor and drain, cooler and reach in fronts, speed rail exteriors, bar face and foot rail | Detail behind the bar coolers monthly |
| Restrooms | Toilets, urinals, sinks, mirrors, partitions, dispensers, high touch points, floors, restock consumables | Scrub grout, descale fixtures, detail partitions and door hardware monthly |
| Trash and back dock | Empty every container, replace liners, wipe lids and touch points | Wash out can bodies weekly, sweep and hose the dumpster pad weekly |
| Staff areas and office | Break table, floors, trash, high touch points | Detail lockers, desks and vents monthly |
Twelve areas, and every one of them has a nightly half and a periodic half. That’s a longer list than most owners expect to see on a quote. It’s also still not the whole job, because three of the things a commercial kitchen needs most won’t appear on it at all.
What Is Almost Never Included in a Restaurant Cleaning Contract
Janitorial work has a boundary, and on the far side of it sit trades that need their own licenses, their own equipment and their own paperwork. A cleaning contract that promised all of it would be a contract you shouldn’t sign.
Hood and exhaust system cleaning. Cleaning the hood plenum, the ductwork and the rooftop fan to NFPA 96 is certified work. It ends with a written report naming what was cleaned and what wasn’t, a label posted in the kitchen, and a certificate you keep on the premises.
Your janitorial crew wipes the hood exterior and washes the filters. Those are two different jobs, and the grease that drives your fire risk collects where neither one of them reaches.
Grease trap and interceptor pumping. A licensed hauler pumps it and gives you a manifest. Nobody with a mop is going near it.
Floor stripping and refinishing. Stripping old finish and laying new coats is project work, priced by the square foot and scheduled around a closure. Deep quarry tile and grout restoration usually is too.
Carpet extraction and upholstery cleaning. Hot water extraction is a machine job with a dry time. Expect it quoted per visit.
Pest control. A licensed applicator’s territory, though your cleaning crew is your early warning system for it.
Biohazard, sewage backups, flooding and post construction cleanup. Different equipment, different disposal rules, different insurance.
We handle the nightly and periodic work in the table above, plus floor stripping and waxing and carpet cleaning as scheduled projects. We don’t certify hoods and we don’t pump traps, and any company telling you otherwise is either subcontracting it or hoping you don’t ask. Where all of this sits relative to what your own closing crew already does is laid out in our guide to restaurant cleaning services for owners.
Who Supplies the Soap, the Liners, and the Chemicals
This is one clause, it’s usually one sentence, and it moves real money every month.
Two arrangements are normal. Either the cleaning company supplies everything and bills it, or you buy consumables and the crew installs them. Both are fine. What isn’t fine is leaving it out, which is how a restaurant runs out of roll towel on a Saturday because each side assumed the other was buying it.
Consumables means hand soap, toilet paper, roll or folded towel, seat covers, can liners and hand sanitizer. Chemicals means degreasers, floor cleaner, glass cleaner and sanitizer. Ask specifically about the sanitizer used on food contact surfaces, since its concentration is regulated and somebody has to be testing it.
Then make the restocking measurable. “Restock as needed” can’t be enforced by anyone. A dispenser standard can:
Contractor restocks all restroom consumables on every visit. No dispenser shall be left below 20 percent of capacity at the conclusion of service.
That’s a line a manager can check in ninety seconds on the morning walk.
The Lines That Decide Whether the Scope Holds Up
A task list with no operating terms around it is a wish list. Six lines turn it into a service.
- Access. Who holds keys and alarm codes, who opens, who locks up, and what happens the night a code changes.
- Service window. The crew starts after close and is out by a stated time. Put the time in writing if you have a morning bake or an early delivery.
- Crew size and supervision. How many cleaners, and the name of the supervisor who walks the building. A two person crew and a four person crew produce very different nights on the same scope.
- Inspection cadence. How often somebody from the company inspects the work rather than waiting for you to complain. We run quality checks weekly and hand over the form, and asking any bidder for a blank copy of theirs tells you quickly whether the program exists.
- Correction window. You report a miss by a stated hour, they fix it within a stated window, and there’s a credit if they don’t. This is the single most useful sentence in the whole document.
- Change orders. How added work gets priced and approved, in writing, before it happens.
Six lines, and none of them require a lawyer. They’re the difference between a scope that describes a service and a scope that produces one.
How to Put Two Quotes Side by Side
Comparing quotes fails when you start from the totals. Start from the scopes instead and the totals explain themselves.
Step one: line the scopes up by area, not by price. Write your twelve areas down the left of a page and fill in what each company promised for each one. Blanks are the point of the exercise.
Step two: circle every frequency difference and do the arithmetic. Convert both to visits per month at 4.33 weeks. If one bid buys you 26 kitchen floor degreases a month and the other buys nine, you’re not looking at two prices for one service.
Step three: add the excluded work back at real cost. Quarterly hood certification, grease trap pumping, two floor refinishes a year and a carpet extraction all land on your P&L whether or not they’re on this contract. Price them once and carry the same figure into both columns so neither quote gets credit for hiding them.
Step four: pick one scope and make both companies bid that one. Take the more complete of the two schedules, or write your own from the table above, and ask both to price that exact document. This is what “apples to apples” actually requires, and any company that won’t do it has told you something useful. Once you know what the work is, what a monthly contract should cost by restaurant size becomes a question with an answer.
Then read across your page one more time. The company that wrote more into that second column isn’t the expensive one. It’s the one that quoted the nights you were going to pay for anyway, in closing labor, in equipment you replaced early, or in the morning your inspector opened a floor drain.
Want a scope of work you can actually compare? We’ll walk your kitchen, write every line out area by area with the frequencies attached, and hand you the document whether or not you hire us. Call Excellence Janitorial Services at (800) 851-0806 for a free, no obligation quote anywhere in Northeast Pennsylvania.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is not included in a restaurant cleaning contract?
Standard exclusions are certified hood and exhaust cleaning, grease trap pumping, floor stripping and refinishing, carpet extraction, pest control, and biohazard or flood cleanup. Some companies quote the floor and carpet work as scheduled projects alongside the contract. The rest belong to separate licensed trades and arrive as separate invoices.
Who supplies the soap, paper towels, and trash liners?
Whichever side the contract says. Both arrangements are common: the cleaning company supplies consumables and bills them, or the restaurant buys them and the crew installs them. Get it in writing along with a restocking standard, such as no dispenser left below 20 percent of capacity at the end of service.
How long is a typical restaurant cleaning contract?
Twelve months is the norm, usually with automatic renewal for successive twelve month terms. Notice windows for stopping that renewal commonly run 60 to 90 days before the anniversary date, and many contracts also allow termination without cause on 30 to 60 days written notice. Contracts longer than 24 months are worth pushing back on.
Does a restaurant cleaning contract include hood cleaning or grease traps?
Not the certified versions of either. A janitorial scope covers wiping accessible hood surfaces and pulling, washing and replacing the grease filters, usually weekly, though a high volume fry heavy kitchen often needs them more often than that. Cleaning the plenum, ductwork and rooftop fan to NFPA 96 is a certified specialty, and grease traps are pumped by a licensed hauler who leaves you a manifest.
Why is one cleaning quote so much cheaper than another?
Usually because it buys fewer nights or fewer tasks. Labor is most of the cost, so a lower price almost always traces back to a lower frequency, a smaller crew, a shorter task list, or consumables that were quietly left to you. Compare the two schedules line by line and the gap explains itself.
What happens if the cleaners miss something?
That depends entirely on whether your contract has a correction window. A good one says you report the issue by a stated time, the company corrects it within a stated window, and you get a credit if it isn’t corrected. Without that clause you have no remedy short of ending the contract.
Can I add services to a cleaning contract later?
Yes, through a change order. The contract should say how added work is priced, who has to approve it, and that it goes in writing before the work happens. Restaurants add scope constantly as seasons and volume change, so a clean change order process matters more than getting the first scope perfect.
Do restaurant cleaners work during business hours or after close?
Almost always after close, because floors have to be empty and equipment has to be cold. Your scope should state the earliest start time and the latest finish, especially if you have a morning prep cook or an early delivery arriving before the crew is out.