Quoting for cleaning restaurants
Restaurants are one of the hardest clients to serve.
Here we are talking about just the areas where customers eat, toilets and the floors in the kitchen areas. This article does not include cleaning the kitchen equipment which is normally a different speciality.
Many commercial cleaning companies will not clean restaurants because they are difficult to do for the price that can be charged.
How to quote for restaurants
We find that restaurants of the same size, take 25% more time than offices that also have toilets to clean.
Generally, offices without toilets to clean take 20% less time. This happens when the toilets are situated in the communal building areas and so are cleaned by others.
In addition, you will probably need scrubber drier machines, which are expensive and not all cleaners have the experience to use them or even the strength to carry them around such as upstairs if needed.
This is because
No need to read the rest of this articfe as many people will not want to know all this, but these are the reasons why:
- restaurants take longer to clean
- restaurants are harder to clean
- commercial cleaning companies cannot charge so much
As a result many commercial cleaning companies will not clean restaurants
1, Cleaning needs to be done more often:
In an office, every set period, such as weekly, carpeted areas need to be vacuumed.
In addition, the cleaners should look at the entire carpet every day and vacuum particularly dirty areas. This in the trade is called spot cleaning, as the cleaners just clean where they spot dirt.
Likewise, every set period, such as weekly, hard floor areas should be swept and then mopped.
However, in a restaurant, cleaning is necessary more often because areas involving food preparation and consumption must be scrupulously clean and disinfected at all times. This requires a minimum of at least daily cleaning and disinfecting.
2, Cooking processes
The big problem here is the accumulation of oil, especially where food is fried. Consequently, a fried chicken restaurant is potentially the worst case scenario.
Even if the cooking area has excellent ventilation oil still escapes and gets into the air, from the intensive and long cooking processes.
Oil will then cake itself onto the walls and coagulate into dust that needs to be removed.
So even regular dusting needs
- a cloth with degreaser chemical
- then the degreaser must be removed with a wet cloth.
This restaurant light fitting demonstrates all too clearly how the cooking oil in the air mixes with the airborne dust leaving a sticky coating.
See the difference after degreasing and a wipe with a wet cloth.
Sadly many cleaning companies often forget the second stage of removing degreaser with a cloth gently soaked in water. By not removing the sticky degreaser combined with oil, dirt continues to adhere to it from any dusty or dirty items with which it come into contact.
Basically in the same way that degreaser helps remove dirt from an object, if left on an item it them helps do the reverse. It takes dirt from the air and puts it on the object that was cleaned.
Also it is not good for the environment and is harmful to people, if chemicals are left on items that have been cleaned
3, Unpleasantness
Staff cleaning a restaurant have to deal with more waste. Having to clean vomit out of a toilet and other unpleasantness means that restaurant jobs have a higher turnover than cleaning a nice pristine and smart office.
4, Client already has a similar specialism
Please stay with us on this one, it may seem theoretical, but we find it is an important point.
World trade works best when the buyer and seller have vastly different skills. The buyer does not know about medicine and the seller who is a doctor does. Each party is getting something they cannot do for themselves.
In a smart office the customer does not want to get involved with cleaning and often does not have access to cleaners. They really value a company that can do and take care of this for them as it is very different from what their main business.
Restaurants, on the other hand, employ staff with similar skills, so they can more easily do it for themselves. As a result, although they may hire you in order to avoid their having to do it, there is not the same value.
5, The restaurant trade is a hard gig
Restaurants prepare food, but without the mechanised advantages of large factory production lines, are hugely labour intensive.
Restaurant personnel work hard and long hours, even the higher skilled chefs work hard and do massive hours.
So by cleaning restaurants, the cleaning business is in the catering business with it’s long hours and low margins. Very different from top end smart offices.
6, There are more hard floors
If a vacuum scrubber drier machine is not used, these hard floors take longer than vacuuming a carpet.
First, a hard floor has to be swept or vacuumed to remove loose material, then mopped with detergent and then a last time with water.
7, Foodstuff
Food generally, leads to sticky hands that increase smudging on surfaces, and food on the floor and general dirt.
8, The toilets are harder to clean
Users of restaurant toilets tend to leave them in more of a mess than with offices.
This is because
- They are used more often as customers tend to use the restautant and go to the toilet
- Strangers come in off the street just to use the toilets
- In more down market, open later at night, or with high foot flow restaurants, people leave them in more of a mess.
- Office toilets are used more by people that work in that office and so are part of the office community, restaurants are used by strangers who are not.
So that concludes the reasons what we have found so far, about why restaurants are harder to clean, take longer and can be less profitable. So many commercial cleaning companies will not touch them.