How To Keep A Restaurant Clean in 5 Easy Steps

It’s important to keep any place of business clean and professional in appearance, but restaurants are especially important to do so – and at times, tricky. Consumers trust restaurants to keep them both happy and healthy. It may seem easy to minimize, but feeding people is truly an important responsibility – and it can feel extremely violating when that trust is broken. Plus, the health of your business depends on the health of the consumers that enjoy it. Keeping people safe is important to do for the right reasons, but your livelihood matters, too. Fortunately, the food business is an incredibly rewarding line of work, and with the right cleaning process it doesn’t need to be an additional challenge.

Don’t underestimate checklists

Especially if you run a crew of multiple employees, checklists are a powerful tool for communicating between individuals and different shifts. They keep things running efficiently so tasks aren’t getting repeated or missed completely. They also allow you to ensure everything is getting done as-needed, while also providing you a record of the work. Checklists should be created according to your business’s needs, but some great ways to break down tasks include: morning or opening tasks and night or closing tasks, daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly and bi-monthly tasks, as well as quarterly and semi-annual tasks.

Divide the work between the front and back of house

The two different spaces have two different needs, so make sure to split the work for each accordingly. Front of house tasks are often more geared toward appearance and vanity – which is important to attracting customers, but may not directly impact the health or quality of food. For example, having windows cleaned on a daily or weekly business can inspire faith in customers that your business is well run, but functionally less important than properly sanitizing cooking utensils. Categorize every to-do onto one of the lists to make sure everything is completed as needed.

Keep everything organized

The more organized your cooking tools and business resources are, the more likely they are to be kept in the best possible condition. If you are finding items shoved into bins or drawers without much of a system in place, consider improving your storage methods to accommodate a well-organized kitchen that helps keep itself clean.

Implement an effective system for communication

This may not be directly related to cleaning, but it can impact it in a big way. Your team may have excellent communication when talking to one another, but messages can get lost or forgotten during the hustle and bustle of the day. Make sure there is a dedicated place for crew to leave any important feedback and have it put on record, so everybody is sure to be kept up to speed on the important things no matter what curveballs the day may throw.

Follow legal guidelines

This is obvious, but many businesses do neglect it. When creating your official task list, make sure even less-than-obvious items make it onto the list by consulting the necessary resources to keep you in legal compliance. In this way, you can run your business with true confidence, and enjoy it all the more.