Ensure You Have A Specific Process For Cleaning These Commonly Neglected Places In Your Restaurant

Restaurant sanitation has never been more important than today. It will be even more important tomorrow, and every next day, as COVID-19 restrictions seem to be lifting around the country and restaurants are opening back up with limited indoor seating or more.

If you seized the (10-month) moment, then you may be ahead of the game in terms of having deep cleaned your restaurant. If you were like most people, anxious at what’s going on and how it will affect your business, and missed the chance to deep clean, don’t sweat it. Add these steps into your cleaning procedures, so that while you get your restaurant back into tip-top shape, you won’t miss these commonly neglected areas:

Under-Furniture

Booths, chairs, tables, and carts – they’re all regularly cleaned and disinfected on top, but how often is the same done for them underneath? The answer is: rarely. For those pieces of furniture and other restaurant items that aren’t fixed to the floor, flip them upside down and clean and disinfect their undersides the same way you do their tops. For booths and other furniture that are affixed to the floor, consider hiring professionals.

Menus & Menu Holders

If your restaurant uses laminate menus (some opt to print and recycle daily), then it’s going to take more than just a spray and quick wipe of each menu. Take the time to disinfect each and every menu, and then get into the menu holders that you likely have hanging by the host podium.

If you use those traditional menu holders that fold out, and have that leather-stitched trim, it may be time to replace all holders.

Kitchen Appliances

When it comes to your refrigerators, freezers, ice machine, soda machine, oven(s), and all other major kitchen appliances, set aside enough time to completely clean and disinfect them, inside and out. Inside and out means inside, on top, on all sides, and underneath, too. 

Your patrons won’t see that you’ve made these efforts, but it will improve the air quality in your kitchen, help to preserve food for longer, cook and bake food better, and increase the longevity of your appliances (which are expensive).

Walls

Dust from ceiling to floor, then disinfect from ceiling to floor. All of your walls. Trust us, just do it.

Light Fixtures

On both ends of the restaurant experience, patrons or staff, we have settled on thinking that lights don’t need maintenance as long as all bulbs are lit and there isn’t any lint hanging off of them. This is not the right way to see the light.

Remove all furniture and move-able objects from underneath your light fixtures and get up there with a ladder, a spotter, dusting materials and a disinfecting solution, and clean your light fixtures. It’s important to remove all dust and particles that can carry airborne viruses.