Besides preparing food, cleaning is a top restaurant priority. Not only do you need to ensure that you prepare customers delicious meals, you also want to ensure that you guarantee their safety whenever they come and dine with you.
Unfortunately, not all restaurants get this right. Even major brands known all over the world experience regular trouble with rancid fat buildup around their ducting and mice droppings in their machines.
In this post, therefore, we take a look at the best way to clean your restaurant kitchen so that it is always safe for food preparation. Check out the advice below.
Create A Daily Cleaning Schedule
The first step is to create a daily cleaning schedule. This should comprise all the things that you need to do daily to keep your restaurant kitchen hygienic for the public and paying customers.
Do the following:
- Clean all surfaces with disinfectant spray approved for your area
- Clean all beverage machines manually, such as coffee makers and espresso machines
- Wash your cleaning rags and sponges daily so that they do not accumulate bacterias
- Refill your soap dispensers
- Sanitize all your utensils, ideally in an industrial dishwasher.
- Sweep your floors and storage areas
- Clean out food preparation sinks at the end of the day.
While there is a lot of work involved in creating a daily cleaning schedule, the benefits are worth it. Not only do you make your kitchen more hygienic, but you make it more efficient too. Chefs need to be able to work with clean equipment to avoid interrupting their processes.
Create Your Weekly Cleaning Schedule
The next step is to decide which jobs you’re going to do at the start of the working week (usually on a weekday morning when the kitchen is quiet).
Which tasks you assign this category depends on the type of kitchen setup you have. You may, for instance, want to clean out floor drains on a weekly basis. You may also want to sanitize your refrigerators and freezers, especially if you notice any unpleasant smells building up.
If you have a deep fat fryer, you’ll want to empty this once per week and boil it out. You’ll also want to manually clean your ovens, particularly if they are in continuous use.
To speed up floor cleaning, you can use floor buffing machines. These help to remove any ingrained particles and freshen up the appearance of your restaurant quickly, without having to engage in too much elbow grease.
Choose Monthly Cleaning Tasks
Lastly, you’ll want to consider your monthly cleaning tasks. These are challenging tasks that you might want to include in your weekly cleaning schedule every four weeks.
Monthly cleaning tasks include things like manually cleaning the ceiling and walls, cleaning the vent hoods, sanitizing all your equipment, such as your coffee machine, and wiping down exposed refrigerator coils.
If you have pest traps, you should inspect and replace them once per month. You will also need to empty any grease traps to prevent the smell from affecting your operations.
