by Clean-as-you-go is the answer to TouchReady® Surfaces
Daily destruction of potential germ harbors has been the general protocol when attacking a restaurant’s high-touch surfaces. Scheduled cleaning is an important component but deep cleaning once a shift or day allows bacteria and virus to flourish up to 24 hours. Considering the low infectious dose of norovirus and salmonella’s ability to double every 20 minutes, gaps in the cleaning cycle quickly accelerate the risks.
Between the power of existing bacteria to form biofilms and the ability of virulent viruses to vacation in neglected areas for days or weeks, key surfaces require frequent attention. Bacteria and virus harbors are replenished with every new customer and every wave of service.
Kitchen Harbors
Kitchen cleaning gets a lot of attention, especially at the end of the day or shift. Highly developed protocols are marshalled to primarily kill the enemy and defeat the outbreak army.
Handwashing For Life has a bias for cleaning versus killing. Killing takes harsh chemicals with complicated, often unreadable, labels and restricted use instructions. Pathogen removal takes advantage of forces like safe chemical action to crack open, penetrate, loosen and emulsify soil deposits. Removal also utilizes friction to speed deep cleaning rather than waiting the slow death inflicted by germicides.
Staff need to know why, when and how to clean-as-they-go. Define the surfaces they are responsible for and what products and protocols they must use.
Service Area Harbors
The flow of customers, healthy and unhealthy, bring with them colds, influenza and the hands to touch surfaces and spread existing contaminations. Operators often pay less attention to the pathogens coming in the front door. Their negligence is perpetuated by their health inspectors who spend all their time in the kitchen where the FDA is focused.
Operators who decide to pay more attention to diner wellness are often rewarded with lower staff absentee rates.
Restroom Harbors
The need for restroom cleanliness can not be overstated. Customers are increasingly making dining decisions based on this metric, seen to directly reflect owner values and likely kitchen cleanliness.
Norovirus remains the far and away leader in foodborne illness and second only to the common cold in person-to-person transmission. If it didn’t originate in the restaurant’s loo then the norovirus likely came from someone’s home bathroom. Either way, frequent surface cleaning is a must.
The secret to restroom cleanliness is to employ people who understand and accept the task and its public health implications. Give them professional products. Monitor their work. Pay them a premium to maintain their restrooms TouchReady. Celebrate their success.
Your Frequent-Use Cleaner 10-point checklist:
- Go for versatility. It simplifies and encourages frequency and speed.
- Insure it is effective for the location, the soil.
- Fast soil wetting and penetration.
- Good foaming to lift soil away.
- Easy rinsing, avoiding residues.
- Pleasant fragrance to encourage use.
- User-friendly, no gloves required.
- Convenient for all.
- Reliable dispensing and chemical quality.
- Chose a supplier with specialty know-how, not a “bundler”
