Restaurant Cleaning Tips to Stay Health Compliant

To pass your health inspection every time and protect your customers, it's essential to follow the restaurant cleaning tips here.

Is your restaurant staying on top of health code policies? In the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration takes these policies seriously. Still, there are many common health code violations that restaurants make. 

This includes everything from personal hygiene to food storage, cross-contamination, and more. To make sure you pass your health inspection every time, you must improve your restaurant cleaning. 

Do you want to learn how to protect your customers with restaurant cleaning? Keep reading this article for the top tips to follow when cleaning your restaurant to stay compliant. 

Identify Neglected Areas in Cleaning

When your staff cleans your restaurant, there are often areas that get neglected. They are not often seen, so it can be easy to ignore them during cleaning. However, these neglected areas can be dangerous for your health.

Plus, they are some of the commonly checked areas during a restaurant health inspection. 

For example, you must regularly clean your soda fountain nozzles. When the drinks come into the cups, the sugary syrup makes it easy for organisms and bacteria to grow. 

These need to be cleaned every day, otherwise, they can begin to grow mold and other dangerous organisms. 

Similarly, you need to regularly clean your ice bins. These are often reviewed closely by health inspectors for signs of bacteria and mold. If you don't keep them clean, you may fail your health inspection. 

Other things you need to clean regularly include can openers, high chairs, and menus.

Use the Right Restaurant Cleaning Supplies

If you thoroughly clean your restaurant but use the wrong type of cleaning supplies, it may not be as effective. Using the right cleaning supplies can help you kill germs in your restaurant to stay hygienic.

Some restaurant cleaning products you should always have on hand include bleach, disinfectant wipes, stainless steel cleaners, food prep gloves, and more.

Having these cleaning products will make it easier to sanitize everything in your restaurant to prevent the spread of illness and bacteria. 

Wear Protective Hygienic Gear

To keep your kitchen and restaurant clean and to pass your health inspection, it is also important that you and your employees all wear protective hygienic gear. This is especially important with the spread of COVID-19. Using protective gear can help you prevent the transmission of bacteria.

Some types of protective gear that every restaurant needs to have on hand are disposable gloves for food preparation, aprons, and hair coverings.

This way, employees will be less likely to spread bacteria while they are preparing or serving food to your customers. 

Sterilize Kitchen and Other High-Traffic Areas

Next, you need to regularly sterilize your kitchen and other high-traffic areas of your restaurant. The kitchen is one of the most important areas to keep clean, as this is where all the food will be prepared. 

As part of your restaurant kitchen cleaning, you need to focus on the areas that are touched regularly. These need to be sanitized before and after meal prep for your customer's orders.

These areas include panhandles, fridge handles, oven and microwave controls, and more. To make your cleaning more effective, you should also replace sponges and scrubbing pads at the end of each shift to prevent the spread of bacteria.

You should also sanitize areas in the front of your restaurant where your customers will be. These high-traffic areas include the front door, counters, restroom surfaces, and more. 

If you have hundreds of customers each day, they can each bring in different germs. By sanitizing these areas each day, you will be more likely to pass your restaurant health inspection. 

Create Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Checklists

Something that makes it easier to keep your restaurant clean is creating daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning checklists. This way, you will not forget to clean certain areas of your restaurant.

Each day, your employees should clean and sanitize all surfaces, sweep and mop, clean fryers and grease traps, empty the trash, and more. 

Each week, your staff can do a few more deep-cleaning tasks. These include washing the walls, sanitizing refrigerators, and more. 

Monthly tasks are a bit more involved. This includes dealing with grease buildup, emptying and cleaning freezers, and more. Creating these checklists will help you ensure that each of these tasks is completed when necessary. 

Communicate With Your Staff

While creating these checklists will help you keep your restaurant clean, you must communicate your expectations with your staff. This way, everyone will be on the same page with the cleaning expectations and will be more likely to follow your cleaning requirements. 

As your needs change, you can update your cleaning expectations and regularly communicate these with your employees. 

Hire Professional Cleaners

Finally, you may want to hire professional cleaners to help you keep your restaurant clean. First, these cleaners have the right restaurant cleaning products, equipment, and knowledge to clean your space. 

They will help you save time with your restaurant cleaning, which gives you more time to focus on your other responsibilities. They will also provide higher quality cleaning that will help you stay health compliant. 

If you need help with eco-friendly cleaning in restaurants, you can use Purbloc's natural cleaning products. 

Need Restaurant Cleaning? We Can Help

When you own a restaurant, you must stay on top of your cleaning to be health compliant and to protect your customers. By following each of these restaurant cleaning tips, it will be much easier to keep your space clean and hygienic. 

Are you looking for help with keeping your restaurant clean? Purbloc can help! We offer safe commercial cleaning products and coatings to stop the spread of illness and bacteria. 

Contact us today to find a local certified Purbloc applicator!