How to Maintain High Hygiene Standards in Your Restaurant

Your restaurant’s hygiene and cleanliness is not only paramount for first impressions, but it is also a legal requirement to ensure the safety and well being of your customers and staff.

We’ve put together a guide of how to ensure you maintain high hygiene standards in your restaurant.

1. Invest in commercial restaurant cleaning services

While keeping up with daily in house cleaning is essential, one way you can ensure high cleaning standards is by investing in professional cleaning services for restaurants.

Cleaning expertise: Commercial cleaning companies like Total clean are highly trained in industry standard protocols
Best cleaning equipment: Commercial cleaners have access to industry grade cleaning equipment and cleaning disinfectants that are more effective than average cleaning products
Cost effective cleaning: hiring professionals is more cost effective in the long run as your team won’t need to spend as much time cleaning and can focus on giving fantastic customer service.
Can perform restaurant deep cleaning: Monthly or quarterly deep cleans can help maintain a high level of cleanliness which will help support health inspections and reduce the chance of pest infestations

2. Have food safety procedures in place

Food safety protocols are essential for ensuring the safety of your customers

Ensure proper food storage
Ensure hands are thoroughly washed when handling and preparing food
Ensure adequate stock rotation, use clearly marked use by dates
Use different coloured chopping boards for meat, dairy, vegetables and different milk jugs for dairy and non dairy to avoid cross contamination
Make sure staff understand allergy protocols
Monitor refrigerator temperatures daily
Use thermometers to ensure safe internal cooking temperatures

How to Maintain High Hygiene Standards in Your Restaurant

3. Sanitise dining areas

Your dining area is the first impression customers have of your restaurant, so it’s really important to ensure cleanliness and hygiene is maintained.

Wipe down menus after each sitting
Ensure cutlery is kept clean with no food debris or rust
Ensure tables and chairs are thoroughly sanitised after use
Keep condiment bottles clean
Clean tables thoroughly using products with non toxic chemicals

4. Implement strict personal hygiene measures for employees

To keep on top of the cleanliness of a restaurant, hygiene must start with employees.

Handwashing: Staff should be encouraged to wash hands thoroughly and frequently, particularly after using the toilet, handling food or handling waste
Health: Employees who are unwell with viruses and colds should be encouraged to stay home to avoid the spread of illness and germs
Uniforms: ensure employee uniforms are kept clean, hair is tied back, hair and beard nets worn if necessary and jewellery is kept to a minimum

5. Implement a regular cleaning schedule

In order to maintain a restaurants hygiene and cleanliness then its recommended that you have a daily, weekly and monthly cleaning schedule

Daily: tables, menus and cutlery are all thoroughly cleaned after use. Countertops are cleaned regularly, kitchens are thoroughly cleaned in between and after service and restrooms are checked for cleanliness every few hours
Weekly: have a weekly cleaning rota where things such as fridges are cleaned out and food rotation is checked
Monthly: Schedule monthly deep cleans where more intense cleaning is done. Commercial restaurant cleaning services offer deep cleaning services so you can focus on the rest of your cleaning schedule
Waste management: Keep on top of waste management by changing bins daily/weekly and ensuring bins are disinfected regularly

6. Health and safety training

Make sure that your employees understand and implement the latest health and safety protocols.

Onboarding programmes: make sure any new starters have a proper onboarding process with food and hygiene training checklists to complete
Refresh current staff health and safety knowledge: Ensure current staff member hygiene and health safety is kept up to date with refresher courses
Employee cleaning schedule: Make sure that each employee is part of the cleaning schedule so they understand daily, weekly and monthly cleaning tasks

7. Keep compliant

It’s incredibly important you keep up to date with all health regulations.

Licensing and certificates: Ensure they are kept up to date and to hand
Keep records: Keep records of stock rotation, cleaning schedules and staff food and hygiene training
Be ready for inspections: Inspections happen randomly, so ensure you are ready for them for by maintaining all hygiene and cleanliness standards

8. Keep communal areas sanitised

Your front of house areas matter. The first thing your customer will see is your foyer area.

Make sure your foyer is clean with the floor clean from debris and menus clean from food
Regularly check restrooms for cleanliness and keep doors handles sanitised
Encourage handwashing by having diagrams of how to wash hands thoroughly
Make sure tables, chairs and floor are cleaned after each sitting

9. Keep a culture of cleanliness

Lead by example and encourage and demonstrate cleanliness so that your customers and employees follow suit.

Mandatory cleaning schedules
Reward employees for cleanliness and hygiene
Ensure appropriate training

Maintaining cleanliness of a restaurant is a team effort. Not only is cleanliness and hygiene important for compliance, it can also be the difference between repeat customers and good reviews.

If you want to take the stress out of maintaining high cleanliness standards, then let Total clean lend a hand.

At Total clean we have over 40 years of experience in the cleaning industry and we understand the unique challenges of hospitality cleaning. We offer fully bespoke cleaning contracts to suit your restaurant’s needs.