Restaurant Cleaning Checklist

Restaurant owners and managers strive to keep their restaurants as clean as possible. Workers must clean numerous items daily to accomplish this. Other items on a restaurant cleaning checklist may be done less frequently, like weekly or monthly. Restaurant cleanliness is important for abiding by state health regulations and helps avoid illness and injury to employees and customers.

One of the most critical areas for restaurant cleanliness is the food preparation areas. These areas are the most likely places to contain bacteria. To keep the food safe in a restaurant, you should clean these areas often, especially after handling foods such as raw meats, poultry and fish. You should clean these areas with a disinfectant to kill all of the germs. After the restaurant closes, apply a disinfectant to these areas and leave it for around 15 minutes. Allowing the disinfectant to sit on the surfaces for this time eliminates more bacteria.

Clean all dishes, including utensils, after each use. Clean dishes and utensils in hot soapy water and sanitize them.

Keep all floors clean by sweeping or mopping them several times throughout the day. Keep the kitchen floors clean and dry. Walls near food preparation areas can contain bacteria from splattering. Clean the walls often with a disinfectant cleanser.

Restaurants must maintain clean appliances to avoid spreading food illnesses. You should clean most appliances on a weekly basis. This includes all refrigerators and coolers, coffee machines, soft drink dispensers, microwaves and ovens. You should clean grills and fryers after each cooking shift.

After each shift, clean cutting boards, get new cleaning rags, empty trash bins, clean out meat and cheese slicers and sweep and mop the kitchen floor. At the end of each day, clean out grease traps and hood filters.