Maintaining a clean, hygienic restaurant is a top priority for any restaurant owner. It’s essential for food safety, healthy staff, happy guests, and getting a good report from the health code folks. Even after implementing 2 years of COVID-related super sanitation practices, a basic daily routine will keep your restaurant clean and help ensure a pleasant guest experience any time of the day.
The following are 9 easy restaurant cleaning and sanitation tips that make a big impact on guest experience.
Clean the front door and entrance
First impressions matter, and that starts with your entrance. Sweep the walkway leading to your restaurant’s entrance and clean up any debris or trash. On the door itself, wash the windows (outside and inside) and wipe down door handles and door frames to remove any gunk, dirt, or fingerprints.
Replace paper menus
Make the switch to user-friendly online menus to prevent the spread of germs and save you money on printed disposable menus. Online menus have come a long way and most customers are used to looking at a virtual menu on their phones or tablets – even in the restaurant. In addition to being much more sanitary, digital menus are easy to update. Ran out of something? 86 the item across all digital menus in just a couple clicks instead of having to verbally update guests or painstakingly correct each printed menu.
Distribute hand sanitizer
It’s a given these days but stay well stocked in hand sanitizer and place it throughout your restaurant, especially in high-touch and high-traffic areas like the entrance, ordering counter, food disposal areas, and drink dispensers. If hand sanitizer is readily available, more people will use it and fewer germs will spread around your restaurant.
Take out the trash before it gets full
This one can sneak up on you fast during the rush but stay on top of the trash. Your guests do not want to see an overflowing trash can or feel like they’re playing Tetris when tossing their wrappers and paper cups. Empty the bins well before the garbage nears the rim – your guests will thank you (okay, they probably won’t thank you but they subconsciously will appreciate it).
Clean bathrooms throughout the day
There’s nothing worse than a gross bathroom. Your bathrooms need to be checked on and cleaned every couple of hours. Do a quick wipe down of sinks, toilets, handles, stall doors, hand dryers or paper towel dispensers, and the main door, too. Sweep the floor and get rid of the trash – and don’t forget to check the stalls, too! At the end of the day, deep clean every surface so you’re all set to open the next day.
Reduce germs with online ordering
Encourage guests to place take-out orders online to reduce unnecessary touch-points and a crowded bar or waiting area. Online orders are not only more hygienic, they’re more efficient, more accurate, and usually garner higher transactions than ordering and paying in person. Your guests expect a smooth online ordering experience these days so offering an intuitive, customer-focused digital ordering experience is a must.
Sanitize high-touch areas
There’s no such thing as being too clean when it comes to high-touch areas. In addition to offering hand sanitizer for your guests, your staff should be sanitizing each high-touch area including registers, buzzers, table tops, chair backs, counters, ordering kiosks – anywhere or anything that guests and/or staff are touching often.
Minimize cell phone use
Cell phones are amazing… and gross. These little computers we’re all walking around with are magnets for germs and very few of us are cleaning them as often as we should. A study out of the University of Arizona a few years ago found that cell phones collect 10x more bacteria than a toilet seat – super gross, right? Ask staff to keep their phones tucked away during their shift and encourage them to give a quick Clorox wipe after each scroll.
Wash your hands
Washing your hands is the simplest yet most effective way to keep yourself and others healthy. If you don’t already, make it mandatory for all staff, both FOH and BOH, to frequently wash their hands. Hand sanitizer does a good job in a pinch but it doesn’t get rid of all germs and obviously sanitizer won’t wash away any rogue sauce stuck on your knuckles.
Keeping a safe, clean restaurant is essential to running a successful restaurant. Scrubbing and sanitizing is only part of the task – easy-to-use restaurant tech helps to minimize high-touch points, greatly reducing the spread of germs, while also creating more efficiencies in your restaurant.
Table Needs is a real-time, end-to-end restaurant technologies solution, hosting, managing and optimizing menus; simplifying sales and ordering; and managing payments onsite and online. We’re restaurant people who know what it’s like running a restaurant, and our tech is designed to make it easier.
Learn more about our all-in-one POS here or contact us to talk through your restaurant’s needs.
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