Your restaurant serves some great food, it has the perfect location in the city, the aroma of fresh bakes from your deli attracts customers all day long. Alsco would like to congratulate you on your well deserved success and wish you all the very best for the future.
Amidst this triumph we do hope you have not forgotten something basic and important. Well, we are talking about your friends Mr. Dirt and Ms. Germs. You may have the best restaurant in the world, but your friendly dirt and germs are always lurking around the corner attempting to dethrone you.
We are not trying to suggest that you do not clean your restaurant or kitchen. But are you sure it is being cleaned well enough?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than half of all foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States are associated with restaurants, delis, banquet facilities, schools and other institutions.
Cleaning a restaurant often becomes a routine. This may result in some places getting overlooked. Often these are the dirtiest places in the restaurant and the last places to be thought about.
Here are the Top 5 Such Places:
The Telephone
All restaurants have phones in various locations. These could be the front desk, the bar or in the kitchen.
- Are these being cleaned regularly?
- And more importantly, are they being cleaned well enough?
Phones are constantly being touched by different people. It is rare and almost unheard of that a person washes their hands before touching the phone. And people will almost always go back to their work, without washing their hands, after using the phone. So, your friendly phone has just become a transmitter of your friend Ms Germs.
This is particularly dangerous in areas where food is being handled. There it is important that not only are the phones cleaned regularly, but also that they should be cleaned properly as well.
Using Alsco’s soft kitchen wipes to periodically clean is one way to ensure that your phones do not become the ticking time bomb that they could well become. These are laundered to the highest standards required of the Australian food industry. Fold these well and use a fresh part each time.
The Sneeze Guard
Does your restaurant have buffets or salad or ice-cream bars or any other form of open food counters? Chances are you have a sneeze guard to cover it and shield it from contamination. However, the very contamination that you are shielding the food from collects on the sneeze guard itself.
So it is important that the guard is cleaned hourly whether is looks dirty or not. Alsco’s tea towels with some glass cleaning liquid can be used for this purpose.
The Door Handles
Much like the phones, no one washes their hands before of after using the door handle to push open a door. So the doors in your restaurant could be germ havens too causing the spread of infection.
Cleaning these should be a part of the routine and should be done every hour or two and more frequently during busy hours.
The Door Mats
Did you know that 500 people entering your restaurant over 40 days bring in, on an average, 24 pound (11 kilograms) of dirt? As an owner of an eatery this would be particularly worrisome. Chances are you have mats to reduce the entry of dust and grime.
- But are they doing their job?
- How effective are they?
Rental lift-and-lay mats such as that from Alsco are proven to be better than both supermarket or hardware store mats to get more out the mats. Read here to know why.
The Dispensers in Your Washrooms
These are regularly touched by unwashed hands and are a hotbed of germs and disease which could spread to other parts of your washroom and then to the restaurant in no time.
Installing automatic no-touch dispensers is a healthier alternative. Advanced technology ensures these dispensers activate when you need them to without having to touch them thus avoiding cross-contamination. As an added advantage, they dispense only the required amount of soap making them more economical too.
We hope these few unrecognised places in your eatery will get the attention they deserve to for them to be as clean as the rest of your restaurant.
For any further assistance on healthier, safer and greener solutions, all you have to do is call. Alsco’s friendly sales representatives will be happy to work with you to offer you tailored solutions for your needs and a free quote as well.