It might be challenging to clean and preserve the floors in areas designated for food preparation and service. The difficulty of the situation is worsened by the fact that hygienic maintenance of food service floors is required to safeguard the customers’ health and adhere to the relevant health standards and laws.
The more thoroughly food service facilities are cleaned, the lower the likelihood that your establishment will be exposed to illnesses caused by consuming contaminated food. By adhering to the appropriate procedures for cleaning your food service business, you can preserve the public image of your facility, cut down on the number of expensive recalls and litigation, and ensure that both your employees and your customers remain healthy and safe.
Everyone who enters your doors, whether on the processing floor or in the offices, is responsible for keeping your food factory clean. This includes employees as well as customers. Your first and most fundamental task should be establishing a cleanliness culture. Maintaining cleanliness in the food service area not only contributes to the overall cleanliness of the facility but also improves the safety of the employees, their productivity, and their morale.
With that said, let’s see how you can keep your food service facility clean.
- Use a squeegee
A squeegee for floor is frequently the most effective tool for removing caked-on dirt and grime from kitchen floors, which is an important step in preventing the accumulation of unsanitary components on these surfaces. A squeegee may remove the tougher particles of dirt and sludge that are left behind after an initial mopping. It is necessary to use a cleaning fluid that has been diluted to emulsify the filth or, at the very least, soften it, but a squeegee may frequently accomplish what a mop cannot.
After the day’s work of cleaning the floors is done, a squeegee can be used to remove any remaining moisture and mop water from the tile and channel it towards the drains. Because the mop is used to clean, while the squeegee is used to wipe, one could argue that the squeegee is the ideal accessory to go along with the mop.
- Clean twice a day
Even though the kitchen floor of food service facilities should be cleaned every day — or even twice daily, if the hours of operation are split between lunchtime and evenings — there is also a more serious measure that should be taken every four to seven days. This measure involves disinfecting the floor with an antibacterial solution. It is recommended that the floor be cleaned once or twice every week using a cleaning apparatus that has a scrub pad measuring 20 inches in diameter and is capable of turning at a rate of 175 revolutions per minute.
Even if you mop the floor every day, there is still a chance that tougher, more adhesive filth can build up, and the objective of this specialized, more intensive cleaning process is to break it apart. The floor cleaner must be long enough to buffer the floor with some degree of comfort and narrow enough to access as many areas as is humanly possible. The advantages are frequently experienced to their fullest extent in confined and difficult-to-access regions, typically the hardest spots for a broom or a squeegee for floor to clean.
- Use cleaning formulas designed for food industries.
When a cleaning solution is marketed as effective on all surfaces, it is a good possibility that it is not an appropriate product for use on the floors of food service facilities. The problem stems because of how porous quarry tiles are, which, in contrast to kitchen countertops and appliances, have the propensity to collect greater quantities of oil than other surfaces.
Because of this, it is strongly suggested that you avoid using conventional cleaning chemicals and opt instead for high-quality cleansers specially developed for use on kitchen floors. There is no true alternative to using a high-quality cleaner created expressly to work on kitchen flooring. Using any old product, such as bleach or dishwasher detergent, to clean tiles is a common mistake. The second option is an especially poor choice since detergents contain lard, which performs the function of an emulsifier and, as a result, makes tiles more slippery.