How Often Should Restaurant Restrooms Be Cleaned

Most customers view the cleanliness of a restroom as a barometer of the restaurant'south overall cleanliness. There is no doubt that having a clean restroom is an expectation of customers and tin can accept a huge impact on the overall success of your operation.

How often should restaurant restrooms be cleaned? Restaurant restrooms should be cleaned and disinfected twice a solar day (oncee in the middle of the mean solar day and in one case at closing), detailed weekly, and checked every 15 minutes to maintain cleanliness.

Restroom cleanliness is something that can brand or break a dining experience. It projects an image of your make in your customers middle. This ways keeping your restrooms clean at all times. How those cleanings are executed is critical.

How Important are Make clean Restrooms?

As stated above, restrooms play an of import role in your guest'south view of your performance. Just how of import are clean restaurant restrooms? A recent study by Zogby International ended that more than fourscore% of customers would avoid a restaurant with a muddied restroom. That is a SCARY statistic and really brings to light how important information technology is to keep your restroom make clean or risk losing an insane amount of customers.

In order to maintain make clean restrooms at all times, it is important to develop a arrangement that spells out how and when to complete all of the types of cleaning as I listed. It is also of import that you have the correct tools for the job.

Cleaning Supplies

Like whatever task, having the right tools is a bang-up starting point. When it comes to cleaning supplies don't skimp! At a minimum, I recommend the post-obit:

Commercial grade restroom cleaner and disinfectant (Ecolab's Oasis 299 is my favorite)
Window Cleaner
All-Purpose Cleaner
Floor Cleaner
Duster
Defended Broom
Towels (Including Dispensable)
Dedicated Floor Cleaning Supplies
- Restrooms WITH a Floor Drain
  - Rubber Squeegee
  - Angled deck brush
  - 5 Gallon Saucepan
- Restrooms WITHOUT a floor bleed will also need
  - Mop & Mop Bucket
Restocking Supplies (Paper towels, Bathroom Tissue, Soap, Urinal Screen, etc)
Scent System (I am a huge fan of automatic aroma systems that neutralize them at timed intervals. Trust me: customers can smell the divergence between clean and muddied with a scent of pine.)

Find that I designated flooring cleaning supplies based on if your restroom has a drain or not. Nowadays, most restaurants are built with a bleed in them. Having a drain is really a HUGE advantage that you will run across when it comes to the end of twenty-four hours cleaning!

fifteen Minute Travel Path Restroom Checks

It does not matter how nifty of a chore your coiffure does with daily cleaning if it'due south non checked and maintained regularly throughout the day. This is the hardest part of the routine to enact. The key to keeping the restroom clean and maintained throughout the shift is to establish a designated employee to exercise 15-infinitesimal restroom travel path restrooms checks.

This can be your shift director, hostess, bartender, server, dining room attendant, or whatever other employee who works near the restrooms. It is vitally important that i person is assigned and accountable for this task. If you use the "its everybody's job" method information technology usually turns into it becoming "nobody's" job.

The scope of what a 15-minute restroom check entails depends on both how heavily your restrooms are used and how "hard" your customers use them. For most, going in and tidying up for 30 seconds is more than plenty.

Things that your team should be looking for on a travel path restroom check include the following:

Toilet and urinals are flushed and unsoiled
The floor is dry and free of trash
Trash receptacle is less than three-quarters full
The mirror is clean without h2o splashes or stains (this is a pet peeve of mine that needs to be corrected on almost every visit)
All supplies stocked

Daily Cleaning

Every bit important equally 15-infinitesimal restroom checks are it is also important to practise a more thorough cleaning betwixt shifts rather than await to the end of the twenty-four hours. In my restaurants, I have e'er made mid-day restroom cleaning a standard operating process. This mid-day cleaning would consist of the post-obit:

Sweeping the floor
Emptying the trash receptacle (No matter how close to empty it was, I ever want to go into dinner service with a fresh can)
Restocking
Cleaning & disinfecting toilets, sinks, & urinals

Having a mid-solar day cleaning arrangement really makes the end of day cleaning easier too. The finish of twenty-four hours cleaning should have anywhere from 10-20 minutes per restroom. Similar I mentioned previously, having a drain in your restroom is a huge advantage that comes into play when cleaning your floors. The steps I train on for cleaning restroom are equally follows:

Restock all paper supplies and soap
Clean and disinfect the urinals using a disposable towel, toilet brush, and restroom cleaner. Be careful to get around the outside and underneath the urinal as well.
Clean the toilets using a disposable towel, toilet brush, and cleaner. If you are using a dedicated toilet bowl cleaner, be sure to wearable rubber gloves and not let it sit in the bowl for too long as some are highly corrosive. To ensure the toilet is fully make clean, bend over and look up inside the room of the toilet and under the toilet set.
Clean and disinfect the sink using restroom cleaner and a towel
Clean the mirror with window cleaner
Clean the floor and drain*
- Restrooms WITH a Floor Bleed
  - Fill up the 5-gallon bucket about halfway with the flooring cleaning solution.
  - Apply liberally to the restroom floor and scrub with the deck brush. Be sure to go the drain embrace, corners, and crevices (which is why it is great to utilize an angled brush.
  - Squeegee the water to the flooring drain. Dump the remaining floor cleaning downward the flooring bleed (goodbye fruit flies!). Wipe the cover of the floor drain dry out.
  - Allow the floor to air dry
- Restrooms WITHOUT a floor drain complete the same process as above but will mop the flooring subsequently scrubbing instead of using the squeegee.
After your floor has dried, spot make clean all other items that exercise not get detailed until the end of the week
- Partitions
- Trash Can
- Baseboards (these usually become pretty nasty from cleaning the floors, so salvage these for dead final!)
Clean and disinfect your cleaning supplies
- Rinse all tools with restroom cleaner and disinfectant. Hang above the mop sink to air dry

Weekly Cleaning

Once a calendar week it makes sense to exercise some actress detail cleaning in addition to the end of day cleaning. For the weekly cleaning, the following should be completed:

Dust the walls, light fixtures, and air vents
Wipe down all walls and partitions
Make clean the within and outside of the trash receptacle
Scrub your faucet and be certain to get all edges and crevices where mold and mildew and abound and eventually build up.

Preventative Maintenance

Keeping your restroom well maintained will get a long way in helping your team proceed it clean for your customers. E'er address a leaking faucet or toilet every bit presently equally it is reported. The longer it waits on repair, the more than water will leak to your floor which can aroma and attracts pests and other leaner. Continuing water also contributes to your grout receding and somewhen wearing abroad.

Tile floors that are missing grout create yet another spot for that evil-smelling, bacteria-infested water to fester. In addition, some urine will be missed during cleaning and begin to build up and sit in recessed grout. For this reason, it is incredibly important to replace grout when it wears more than only below the tile level.

A fresh coat of paint can make a restroom seem immediately cleaner. It'south a proficient exercise to repaint your restroom every few years to keep the room looking great. Similarly, lighting plays a huge role in the perception of cleanliness. A brilliant well lit restroom ever appears cleaner than a muddy, nighttime 1.

Exposed chrome pipes look fantastic, merely if they are rusted it adds to the image of a muddied restroom. If you lot notice the exposed pipes are developing rust, move quickly to repair or replace the rusty pipes. This volition also assistance to forbid the rust from spreading on the pipe and somewhen developing a leak.

Lastly, ensure the caulking effectually your fixtures remains clean and intact. When you detect they offset to await crude, pick upwards a tube of high-quality mold resistant caulk from your local hardware shop and remove and supervene upon the old caulk.

If you are planning a new restaurant and considering calculation an employee restroom, sympathise that it needs to be kept clean and sanitary as well. Guests volition not encounter it but since it is solely for employees it is considered a designated role of the workplace and therefore would be subject to follow all OSHA guidelines. In this instance, the guidelines are laid out in 1915.88a:

The employer shall establish and implement a schedule for servicing, cleaning, and supplying each facility to ensure information technology is maintained in a clean, sanitary, and serviceable condition.
OSHA 1915.88 – Sanitation

Having a organisation in place to keep your restrooms make clean at all times can make or break a eatery. Always be diligent in following up and ensuring your team is keeping the facilities make clean and building trust with your customers. It shows your restaurant's dedication to the customer experience and goes a long way in instilling the confidence that keeps customers returning again and once again.