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Cleaning is the most critical process in your restaurant after cooking. It ensures you present safe and delicious food to your customers.
Employing a restaurant cleaning checklist to keep everything organized and consistent is an effective way to maintain a safe, compliant restaurant.
How Often Should You Clean Your Restaurant?
In over 63% of restaurants, just a single food worker’s action can lead to contamination. It’s crucial to mitigate this risk where you can, meaning your staff and restaurant should always be as clean as possible. The best way to do this is by developing a restaurant cleaning list.
You should clean your restaurant daily — before, during and after every service. Some hard-to-reach areas can be handled weekly.
Every restaurant must schedule deep cleaning at least every six months. You may need to arrange monthly or quarterly cleaning intervals if you’re very busy.
Importance of Maintaining a Clean Commercial Kitchen
Basic hygiene isn’t the only reason to maintain a clean kitchen — it’s also necessary to ensure your restaurant runs efficiently, keeps customers healthy and stays open.
Here are the benefits of regularly cleaning your restaurant:
- Maintains health code compliance: It helps you maintain a compliant business and reduce the risk of grease and residue fires.
- Boosts employee morale: It keeps your staff safe and happy, motivating them to work efficiently.
- Improves food safety: It reduces the risk of food contamination, which can lead to foodborne illnesses.
- Enhances customer contentment: It’s critical to providing customers with excellent food and service.
A commercial kitchen cleaning checklist can turn your restaurant into a well-oiled machine. It offers the following advantages:
- Improves the safety of the food you sell
- Creates a compliant, standardized cleaning procedure
- Decreases the risk of missing tasks
- Helps ensure regular cleaning of vital areas
- Allows you to track weekly and monthly cleaning tasks
- Holds employees accountable
- Helps staff make influential contributions
Cleaning Checklist for the Front-of-House
A customer’s first impression of your restaurant comes from the front of the house. Maintaining a tidy front of the house shows your customers that you care about hygiene and communicates that your back of the house is just as clean.
There are many tasks your staff can handle daily, but some jobs can benefit from professional care. Here’s a cleaning schedule for restaurants that can help you stay compliant:
Daily Cleaning Checklist
Before you open, ensure high-traffic surfaces and bathrooms are clean and stocked. After you close, clean and sanitize everything again, including floors, tabletops and bathroom surfaces. While your staff may be able to handle some of the basics, a day porter could lighten their load and help them prioritize getting the restaurant set up for the next service.
Weekly Cleaning Checklist
Once a week, you need to clean the harder-to-reach areas, such as vacuuming under fixed seating, sanitizing and scrubbing toilets, wiping glass surfaces and dusting fixtures. These tasks benefit from professional commercial janitorial services to ensure attention to detail.
Monthly, Bi-Annual and Annual Cleaning Checklist
Some front-of-house tasks only need to happen once a month. These involve deep cleaning of bathrooms, dusting ceiling fans and vacuuming cobwebs. You must also check for damage to curtains, upholstered items, chairs and carpets.
Handling deep cleaning tasks like carpet maintenance is easier when you take advantage of companies that source skilled cleaners.
Cleaning Checklist for the Kitchen
Maintaining a clean commercial kitchen is crucial to the smooth running of your restaurant. If you don’t sanitize and clean equipment, surfaces and utensils, the risk of cross-contamination is higher. It creates a breeding ground for bacteria and germs that cause food poisoning and other foodborne illnesses.
It’s vital to follow commercial kitchen cleaning procedures to ensure you combat any potential errors that could harm your staff or customers. Here are some checklists that can help you adhere to health and safety standards:
Daily Cleaning Checklist
Maintain daily cleaning schedules to ensure your kitchen produces safe and delicious food. Ensure your staff and day porter enact the following:
- Clean and sanitize sinks, surfaces, food-prep areas and cutting boards.
- Frequently wash hands.
- Brush, scrape and clean the fryer, griddle, grill and range.
- Clean and dry any messes.
- Place all pots, dishes and utensils in the dishwasher, run it and put items away.
- Clean and sanitize sinks, knobs and handles.
- Degrease and wipe appliances.
- Clean floor mats and sweep and mop floors.
- Empty drip trays and take out the trash.
- Filter the fryer oil.
Weekly Cleaning Checklist
Weekly commercial kitchen cleaning involves maintaining areas and equipment that build grease and grime in a short period.
Some tasks can be handled in-house, such as boiling out the fryers, replacing the oil and sorting through inventory. Commercial relationship management cleaning companies like One Source can provide vendors who are better equipped to handle more intense cleaning tasks like:
- Cleaning coolers and refrigerators
- Wiping vent hoods
- Deliming sinks, faucets and coffee makers
- Cleaning sink and floor drains with drain acid
Monthly, Bi-Annual and Annual Cleaning Checklist
Monthly deep cleaning is vital to maintaining peak hygiene in your commercial kitchen. Here are the key areas you need to clean at a minimum of six-month intervals:
- Clean behind large appliances.
- Empty and clean grease traps.
- Deep clean kitchen floors, walls and ceilings.
- Sanitize and clean refrigerators, freezers and ice machines.
- Clean extraction fans and hoods.
- Clean pilot lights.
Catering equipment and hard-to-reach areas are challenging to clean. Expert janitorial and high-pressure washing services can make light work of all these tasks.
Cleaning Checklist for the Bar Area
Cleaning your bar is as pivotal as maintaining the rest of your restaurant. It’s a busy area customers see regularly, so keeping it clean improves perceptions and safety. Use these cleaning checklists to ensure your bar is up to health and safety standards:
Daily Checklist
Your bar requires just as much care as your kitchen or front of house. Ensure you maintain the following standards daily:
- Clean and empty trays and trash.
- Run glassware through your dishwasher.
- Keep disposables like straws, napkins and stirrers stocked.
- Wipe and clean speedwells, soda guns and bottles.
- Remove and clean floor mats and sweep the floor.
- Frequently wipe the bar counter.
- Empty ice wells and sanitize them.
Weekly Checklist
To keep your bar presentable and functioning correctly, you need to thoroughly clean and disinfect it. Here are some weekly tasks to help you achieve this:
- Ensure interior cooler surfaces get a thorough spray and wipe down.
- Flush and clean keg pipes.
- Clean behind any equipment you can move around.
- Neaten shelves, bottles and decorations behind the bar.
Monthly, Bi-Annual and Annual Cleaning Checklist
Much like your kitchen and front of house, your bar also requires monthly and annual deep cleaning. The floors, ceiling fans, bar shelves and fixtures all need attention. You can also get a certified handyperson to come in if there’s damage to any curtains, chairs, carpets and other upholstered items.
Keep Your Restaurant Clean With One Source
Keeping your restaurant spotless is challenging, but with expert assistance, it’s not far from possible. One Source has been helping maintain clean and safe restaurants in San Diego for over 15 years.
Our vendors are highly reliable experts in their fields. Whether you need cleaning services daily, weekly or monthly, we can easily find the right team to keep your restaurant pristine.
Curious? Then contact us today for a free quote and get your restaurant shining.
