Restaurant restroom maintenance is a critical daily task—an untended and untidy restroom isn't just unattractive, it's also dangerous. It's also something that could be affecting your restaurant's bottom line. This is what you should know about the importance of restroom maintenance for the health of your customers and your business.
How important is a clean restroom for your restaurant?
You may have the most sanitary kitchen in the world, but a dirty restroom will damage your reputation for cleanliness very quickly. Around 50% of your customers will tell other people if they find an unclean restroom, and 3 out of 10 of those customers won't give you a second chance. Couple that information with the fact that it has become trendy to post photos online along with reviews, and your restaurant could take a serious financial hit. A review by the Harvard Business School indicates that just 3 bad reviews can affect your restaurant's profitability.
Your customers have good reason to be concerned, too. Fecal bacteria is the most likely contaminant on the handle of the door to your men's restroom, while the handle to the door of the women's restroom is likely to be covered in yeast. Other danger zones in restrooms include sinks, faucet handles, and towel dispensers. Sinks are particularly problematic because customers often touch the handles or the faucet after going to the toilet, carrying bacteria with them. (The number of people who don't wash their hands after using the toilet accounts for the bacteria found on the door handles.) Restaurant bathrooms are essentially breeding grounds for everything from the common cold virus to E. coli.
How can you improve the cleanliness of your restaurant's bathrooms?
First, make sure that your staff has a clear understanding of what is considered "dirty" when it comes to your restrooms:
There should be someone on each shift whose designated duties include spot checking the restrooms hourly. Make sure that each server knows exactly who to tell if a customer does report a problem with the restrooms in-between checks.
It's also important to hire a janitorial service to deep clean every night. While your regular staff may be equipped to handle the spot cleaning, they're probably relying mostly on aesthetics. A professional cleaning crew is going to be primarily concerned with disinfecting the surfaces your customers may touch. Since janitorial services work after regular business hours, they won't have to worry about inconveniencing customers while they work.
For more information, contact professionals like Performance Plus.
Share28 July 2016
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