Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Why Is It so Important to Keep Your Grill Clean?



professional chefs in a kitchen
You’d be hard-pressed to find a restaurant in which the grill isn’t constantly in use. From fast food chains to privately-owned fine dining establishments, grills are fixtures in virtually every restaurant kitchen. However, if you’re not keeping your grill immaculately clean, you’re liable to face a litany of undesirable consequences. Budding restaurateurs who are curious about why frequent grill cleaning is absolutely essential can learn a lot from the following tidbits. 

Efficiency
A dirty grill is an inefficient grill. The more food particles, gristle, and assorted filth are allowed to build up on your grill grates, the harder it will be to efficiently cook meat. As a result, many of the entrees prepared on dirty grills are unevenly cooked and, in some cases, unhygienic. Suffice it to say, if your restaurant develops a reputation for serving improperly grilled entrees, you can expect your online reviews to take a nosedive. If keeping your grill grates clean is becoming a more difficult task, it might be time to look into replacing them with brand-new grill grates.

Sanitation
Cooking meat on a dirty grill is incredibly unsanitary. Not only does this decrease the chances of the meat being cooked all the way through, it also increases the likelihood that it will be unevenly heated, with certain areas being very hot and others being very cold. Furthermore, it’s doubtful that any diner who’s served a steak, burger or chicken breast that’s awash in gristle will return to your establishment.  

Cost-Effectiveness
Regularly cleaning your grill can also save you a tremendous amount of money in the long run. In addition to reducing the need for replacement grates, it helps prevent grills from overheating, thereby decreasing the need for costly repairs.

As any experienced restaurateur can tell you, a consistently clean grill is an absolute necessity for any eatery. Failure to properly care for your grill is practically guaranteed to land you in hot water with health inspectors and result in disappointed diners. In the interest of efficiency, sanitation, and cost-effectiveness, clean your restaurant’s grills as often as needed.  

Sunday, January 15, 2017

3 Tips for Maintaining an Impeccably Clean Restaurant Kitchen



professional kitchen
Cleanliness is vitally important in restaurant kitchens. Failure to keep floors, counters, and assorted food prep tools nice and clean can lead to on-the-job accidents and create a variety of health hazards. Furthermore, a messy kitchen isn’t going to do your restaurant any favors with local health inspectors. Fortunately, keeping your kitchen impeccably clean doesn’t have to be an uphill battle. With the help of the following pointers, you and your staff can uphold cleanliness in the kitchen without inhibiting your ability to efficiently serve customers and fill orders. 

1. Divvy up Cleaning Tasks
Going into something with a plan is always preferable to flying blind — and this is particularly true when it comes to kitchen cleaning. At the beginning of each workday, create a list that divvies up the various kitchen cleaning tasks between your staff members. To ensure that people don’t constantly get stuck with jobs they don’t enjoy, make a point of assigning people tasks that make use of their strengths. For example, if a certain employee displays an affinity for cleaning grill grates; consider making this his or her regular cleaning task. Replacing grill grates every so often is also a smart move.

2. Clean at Various Points throughout the Workday
As anyone who’s worked in food service can confirm, most kitchen cleaning tasks need to be performed multiple times each day. In addition to table busing and dishwashing, your staff should also be scrubbing the floors and cleaning the grills as needed. Staying on top of these chores helps avert health hazards and ultimately saves everyone more work down the line.  

3. End Each Workday with a Clean Kitchen
Before your staff heads home for the night, confirm that the kitchen is spotless. This will ensure that you’re able to start afresh with a clean slate and hit the ground running when it comes time to open back up. 

No one is well-served by a messy restaurant kitchen — not restaurant owners, not kitchen staff, and certainly not diners. Although keeping an immaculately clean kitchen may seem like a herculean undertaking, this is actually far from the case. Hard work and consistency go a long way in promoting clean restaurant.