Restaurant owners know that commercial kitchens are fast-paced, high-pressure environments where diners are served with delicious food. You may also know that it’s essential that these kitchens are kept clean and sanitary to maintain a safe environment for both employees and customers. Commercial kitchen cleaning services maintain a kitchen’s cleanliness, including daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks.

Why Is It Important to Keep Commercial Kitchens Clean?

Commercial kitchen cleaning encompasses all aspects of keeping a commercial kitchen clean, including surfaces, equipment, utensils, floors, walls, and ceilings. This type of cleaning is crucial in preventing the spread of harmful bacteria and viruses that can cause foodborne illnesses such as salmonella or E.coli. Additionally, maintaining a clean commercial kitchen helps prevent cross-contamination between food ingredients.

Unsanitary conditions can lead to health code violations that can result in fines or even the closure of the establishment. More importantly, unsanitary conditions put customers at risk for foodborne illnesses, which can lead to hospitalization or even death.

A clean kitchen also promotes efficiency in the workplace since employees are less likely to get sick from illness-causing germs and bacteria. It also helps maintain equipment in good condition so that it continues to function properly over time.

What Happens If You Don’t Clean a Commercial Kitchen?

Allowing your commercial kitchen to remain dirty and unsanitary can not only endanger the health of your customers but could also permanently damage your business’ reputation.

• Fines: Health departments around the world are responsible for ensuring restaurants meet set hygiene standards; failure to adhere to this means a food business could face hefty fines.
• Closure: Depending on the severity of the infraction, a restaurant or catering operation may be closed until they are compliant with health standards. This can lead to a loss of business, revenue, and even jobs.
• Loss of reputation: Negative reviews from customers who experienced food poisoning or other food-related illnesses due to unsanitary conditions can damage your brand’s reputation.

Maintaining a clean and sanitary commercial kitchen is vital for both the safety of your customers and the success of your business.

How to Keep Your Commercial Kitchen Clean

While it requires a bit of planning and time management, there are some simple ways to keep your commercial kitchen clean.

Daily Cleaning Tasks

Daily cleaning tasks in a commercial kitchen include things like wiping down surfaces and utensils with hot soapy water, sweeping and mopping floors, clearing out trash cans to prevent unpleasant odors, sanitizing cutting boards after use, and ensuring that all appliances are turned off at the end of each working day. To make sure these daily tasks are completed efficiently, it’s essential to have a schedule in place with clear expectations for each employee.

This ensures that every staff member knows what they need to do before leaving for the day. You can ensure that nothing gets missed by assigning specific duties every day and keeping track of progress through checklists or logs.

For a more detailed description of daily cleaning tasks, check out our article here: ​​Cleanliness is Key: The Ultimate Guide to Daily Commercial Kitchen Cleaning

Weekly Cleaning Tasks

Alongside daily cleaning tasks, regular weekly cleaning tasks are necessary for maintaining hygiene standards. These tasks include things like deep-cleaning ovens and grills, degreasing hoods, and exhaust fans above cooking equipment, which help improve air quality. Emptying grease traps regularly reduces the risk of clogs, which can lead to unpleasant smells as well as health hazards (sanitizing refrigerators inside-out, among others).

It’s important to complete all weekly cleaning procedures consistently and schedule them at convenient times when there may be less traffic from customers or during slow business hours. This minimize disruptions caused by cleaning activities, as well as allow for more efficient performance since employees have ample time to complete tasks.

We’ve written a comprehensive guide for what tasks to perform for weekly cleaning. You can read about it here: Weekly Commercial Kitchen Cleaning

Monthly or Quarterly Cleaning Tasks

Monthly cleaning tasks are a major part of commercial kitchen cleaning and involve more thorough cleaning procedures like degreasing walls, deep-cleaning floors and drains, cleaning the shelving units inside of refrigerators, scrubbing the corners of the counters, and other hard-to-reach areas with grime buildup.

Additionally, equipment that is not regularly used may also need to be thoroughly cleaned to avoid buildup from dust accumulation. To effectively manage monthly tasks, it’s essential to have a well-structured checklist or schedule in place.

You can assign staff members specific duties for each task and ensure that they have the necessary tools and cleaning supplies. Completing these monthly cleaning tasks is crucial for maintaining hygiene standards but also helps identify potential problems before they become more significant.

Depending on the foot traffic of your establishment, regulating a monthly or quarterly deep cleaning will go a long way to maintaining a clean kitchen. We’ve written about it here: Clean Kitchen, Healthy Business: The Importance of Monthly Commercial Kitchen Cleaning

Hire a Commercial Kitchen Cleaning Service

Attention to detail is critical when it comes to commercial kitchen cleaning. Small details like properly storing and disposing of cleaning supplies or knowing how to clean stainless steel surfaces correctly can make a big difference in maintaining a sanitary environment.

When employees take pride in their work environment by keeping it neat and clean, they’re likely to have higher job satisfaction, which translates into better customer service. Moreover, customers are more likely to return if they know they’re consuming food prepared in a sanitary environment.

In today’s world, where social media plays an important role in shaping public opinion about businesses, having good reviews based on cleanliness can attract new customers while helping to retain loyal ones. Commercial kitchens must be kept clean at all times using proper tools for regular maintenance as well as monthly deep-cleaning routines.

Safe Kitchens provides leading commercial kitchen sanitation services across California. If you need to clean your commercial kitchen, contact Safe Kitchens today.