Cleaning Tasks to Prioritize at Your Restaurant

Regardless of the type of cuisine your restaurant specializes in — be it fast food or fine dining — cleanliness should be among your staff’s foremost priorities. Failing to keep your kitchen and dining area clean can result in sick patrons, negative attention from the Health Department and costly fines.

Fortunately, keeping your restaurant clean doesn’t have to be an arduous chore. Provided you and your staff stay on top of the following tasks, you should have no problem providing patrons with a squeaky-clean dining experience.  

Wipe Down Tables after Every Use

In addition to being unsanitary, improperly bussed tables are notorious for spreading germs and viruses between diners. To prevent this, it’s imperative that every table be thoroughly cleaned after each use. Even without the threat of germs, no customer wants to sit at a table that sticky and dirty. 

Clean Your Storage Units Each Week  

In order to keep your refrigerators and freezers nice and clean, you’ll need to empty them out and give them a good scrubbing at least once a week. Your food is your restaurant’s most important resource, so it’s only fitting that it be stored in a sanitary area. To this end, you’ll also need to frequently check your cooler door gaskets for signs of wear and tear and replace them as necessary.  

Thoroughly Scrub the Kitchen Floor Each Night

It’s very difficult to clean a kitchen floor mid-shift — not to mention dangerous. Since dirty floors are highly conducive to the spread of germs in restaurant kitchens, have your staff give the prep area’s floor a vigorous scrubbing before heading home at night. When performing this task, it’s important that they pay special attention to corners, edges and the areas beneath large pieces of equipment.  

Cleanliness is not something that restaurant owners and managers can take a laid-back approach to. If proper care isn’t taken, the consequences will be unfavorable — for both you and your patrons. In the interest of keeping your restaurant spotless, remember to wipe down your tables after every use, clean your storage units once a week, and vigorously scrub your kitchen floor each night. 

3 Tips for Increasing Energy Efficiency in Your Kitchen

If you’ve been looking for ways to decrease your kitchen’s carbon footprint while increasing its energy-efficiency, it’s time to rethink your approach to energy consumption. Even if you’re not particularly passionate about matters concerning the environment, taking steps to consume less energy can help your financial bottom line.

Luckily, becoming energy efficient is much easier than many restaurateurs think. A little bit of effort and ingenuity can go a long way in saving you money and making your establishment more eco-friendly. 

1. Stay on Top of Equipment Maintenance

Performing regular maintenance on your kitchen equipment can help tremendously in the quest for energy efficiency. This entails cleaning stoves, ovens and refrigeration units on a regular basis, as well as swapping out damaged and defective components as needed. Keeping your food storage units outfitted with top-of-the-line refrigerator freezer parts can prove particularly helpful.

2. Separate Heating and Cooling Devices

Keeping heating and cooling devices far apart can do wonders for your kitchen’s energy consumption. When refrigerators and freezers are placed in the immediate vicinity of stoves, ovens, and other sources of heat, both types of devices have to work extra hard to account for the extreme temperatures, effectively reducing their respective life-spans and driving up your energy costs.

3. Educate Your Staff on Energy Efficiency  

Educating your staff on energy efficiency can lead to an immediate reduction in your energy costs and consumption. When bringing your crewmembers up to speed, place a strong emphasis on the little things. For example, meticulously closing refrigerator doors, shutting off burners and turning off faucets when they’re not in use are all simple – yet highly effective – ways to promote energy efficiency.   

With an ever-increasing number of eateries making efforts to go green, you don’t want your restaurant to be left in the dust. Becoming energy efficient doesn’t mean upending the way your staff does things or spending a princely sum. Properly maintaining your equipment, separating heating and cooling devices, and keeping your staff in the know are all easy ways to do your part for both the environment and your restaurant’s finances.

Properly Caring for Your Kitchen

Your kitchen is essentially the heart of your restaurant. Without a well-maintained kitchen and a knowledgeable, hardworking staff, no eatery would have a fighting chance. As such, it behooves restaurateurs to keep their kitchens in prime condition. A messy, disorganized, or unhygienic kitchen can result in dissatisfied diners and earn your establishment the ire of the Health Department. When working to maintain a professional kitchen, the following measures are sure to come in handy. 

Be Diligent About Daily Cleaning

In the quest to keep your kitchen as sanitary as possible, daily cleaning is not something you can afford to skimp on. In fact, certain cleaning rituals need to be performed multiple times each day. To ensure that your kitchen remains clean and germ-free, be diligent about disinfecting preparation surfaces, wiping down ranges, grills and fryers, and thoroughly cleaning can openers and meat slicers. In the interest of avoiding pests, make sure the areas around waste receptacles remain squeaky clean. 

Regularly Inspect Your Refrigeration Units

Without functional refrigeration units, you won’t have servable food — and without servable food, you won’t have a restaurant. With this in mind, have your refrigerators and freezers inspected on a regular basis and swap out defective components — like cooler door gaskets — as needed. 

Use Slip-Resistant Cleaners and Coatings

An unexpected slip in the kitchen can have disastrous consequences. Not only can this hamper timely food preparation, it’s liable to put you at the receiving end of a lawsuit. If you’re determined to prevent slips in your restaurant’s kitchen, clean your floors with slip-resistant cleaners and encourage your staff to exercise caution at all times.

Properly maintaining your kitchen is something from which everyone can benefit. Your staff will have an easier time preparing meals, diners will receive their orders in a more expedient fashion and your business will quickly find its way into the health department’s good graces.  

Practical Moneysaving Tips for Fledgling Restaurateurs

Going into the restaurant business represents a tremendous challenge. No matter where your eatery is based, attracting clients, cultivating a favorable reputation and promoting the business can be an uphill battle. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of restaurateurs operate at a loss during their first year in business. That being the case, any moneysaving measures you can enact during this time frame are sure to help out.

Use Social Media to Your Full Advantage

In any locale, promoting a restaurant can be expensive. Buying ad time on local television and radio outlets and purchasing ad space in local newspapers and circulars is liable to cost a pretty penny. Conversely, promoting your eatery on social media can help you connect with thousands of prospective diners without costing you a dime. With this in mind, create accounts for your restaurant on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media mainstays and start posting. 

Keep an Eye out for Discount Equipment

Purchasing used or refurbished equipment for your kitchen can effectively save you tens of thousands of dollars. Furthermore, finding places that sell discounted refrigerator freezer parts can help keep your refrigeration system up and running without putting a strain on your finances. Anyone on the hunt for heavily-discounted refrigerator, freezer, oven, grill, broiler or toaster components would do well to pay a visit to O-Reps.com. 

Limit Freebies

Many restaurants provide diners with assorted freebies, like fresh-baked bread and chips with salsa. While this is a great way to show customers your appreciation, it isn’t exactly conducive to saving money. As such, consider placing limits on these freebies. For example, each customer — or group of customers — should only receive one basket of bread or bowl of chips. You may also consider only offering such freebies to diners who specifically request them. 

Restaurant ownership requires a heightened degree of fortitude and an unwavering passion for your craft. In light of all the money lost during their respective first years, a staggering number of restaurateurs have no choice but to close their doors within the aforementioned time period. To prevent your eatery from becoming just another failed restaurant, put the previously-discussed pointers to good use.   

Maintaining an Energy-Efficient Restaurant Kitchen

Over the last decade, a growing number of businesses have begun rethinking their approach to energy consumption. As the effects of global climate change become increasingly difficult to ignore, businesses of all sizes have started looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Fortunately, going green is much easier for restaurants than other types of establishments. As an added bonus, taking a few eco-conscious measures can save you a considerable sum in energy costs. To help your eatery do its part for the environment, consider the following tips.

Keep Track of Energy Consumption

The first step in whipping your kitchen into shape is keeping track of energy consumption. Use specialized meters to record how much water, gas, and electricity various pieces of equipment consume. After your findings have been recorded, make note of which tools need to be updated and which are consuming acceptable amounts of energy.

Invest in Energy-Efficient Parts

Replacing every piece of equipment that consumes too much energy isn’t exactly economical, nor does it help your financial bottom line. For example, stove apparatuses and walk-in refrigeration units are often easier to retrofit than outright replace. This entails keeping old equipment but outfitting it with new components, such as energy-efficient cooler door gaskets.   

Get Behind Eco-Friendly Dishwashers

Although updating your dishwashers may strike you as a large expense, it can save you a tremendous amount in both water and power costs down the line. Dishwashers equipped with heat-recovery condensers and smaller wash-tanks eat up less energy and clean dishes more expediently than their bulky old-school counterparts. 

A push for increased environmental awareness has swept the globe in recent years. Rather than remain mired in the past, it’s in your best interest to get with the times — and see that your restaurant does the same. If you’re determined to bring your kitchen up to snuff, keep an eye on energy consumption levels, engage in retrofitting as needed and invest in eco-friendly dishwashers.  

Meticulously Maintaining Your Walk-in Cooler

A well-maintained walk-in cooler is the only thing that stands between your restaurant and copious amounts of spoiled food. That being the case, it’s in you and your patrons’ best interest that your eatery’s cooler remain in tip-top condition. Luckily, as long as you’re consistent in performing basic upkeep, you should have no problem keeping your cooler in working order. In your efforts to keep your cooler operational, take care to tend to the following tasks.

Keep the Door Closed

While keeping the doors firmly closed may seem like a no-brainer, a surprising number of walk-in coolers break down as a result of doors continuously being propped open. Unless someone is inside the cooler, the door(s) should remain shut. As is the case with refrigerators, leaving doors open for extended periods wears out compressor motors, effectively preventing coolers from functioning properly.

Perform Regular Gasket Checks

Every few months, make a point of checking the gaskets located between the cooler panels. This will enable you to monitor for cracks and other signs of wear. If you come across any gaskets that look particularly weathered, it’s strongly advised that you promptly replace them. Fortunately, O-Reps, the Web’s foremost purveyor of walk-in cooler accessories offers amazing deals on high-end gaskets from a wide range of well-known manufacturers.

Keep the Lights Off

Just as you need to keep the door(s) shut, make sure to turn off the lights when no one is inside the cooler. Lights produce heat, which makes the compressor motor work harder to account for the increase in temperature. Like opened doors, lights that are left on can lead to prematurely kaput compressors. 

A faulty walk-in cooler can mean big problems for your restaurant. In many respects, functional coolers are the most important tools an eatery has, so it behooves responsible restaurateurs to keep them in good condition.   

Great Deals on Commercial Refrigeration Parts at O-Reps

Without fully functional refrigeration units, no restaurant would be able to stay open. Good food is the cornerstone of any successful eatery, and without commercial refrigeration, there’s no efficient way to prevent large amounts of ingredients from going bad. For this reason, it’s imperative that restaurant owners and managers take steps to keep their refrigeration units in prime condition. Swapping out defective parts when needed can go a long way in maintaining these units. Fortunately, great deals on commercial refrigeration parts can always be found at O-Reps’ online store.  

Compressors

An intact compressor is the heart of any heavy-duty freezer or refrigeration unit. This means that if your fridge finds itself stricken with a faulty compressor, you have little time to replace it. Luckily, O-Reps stocks an extensive array of heavily-discounted compressors from such renowned manufacturers as Tecumseh and Copeland. Additionally, the store’s expedient shipping options ensure that you’ll have your new compressor or any other commercial refrigeration parts within two to three days.

Thermostats

A functional thermostat enables you to control the temperature in your restaurant’s refrigeration units. Unfortunately, broken thermostats often lead to extreme increases or decreases in temperature, effectively ruining large amounts of food. To combat this problem, O-Reps sells a wide selection of replacement thermostats, many of which cost well under $100. 

Shelving

Depending on how expansive your menu is, your refrigeration units may be home to abundant amounts of ingredients. In the interest of staying organized, make sure to equip your walk-in fridges and freezers with resilient shelving. In addition to selling discounted name-brand wire shelves, O-Reps also offers abundant custom-made shelving options to more discerning customers.

In light of all the work you’ve put into your restaurant, you’re not about to let its success be hampered by a faulty refrigeration unit. By replacing broken parts in an expedient manner, you can ensure that your on-site fridges and freezers remain operational for the foreseeable future.