Door handles, menus, countertops, bottoms of shoes, and HVAC systems are the big spreaders when it comes to COVID-19. They also can spread other airborne illnesses in your restaurant. Fighting to keep your staff and customers safe can be difficult, but it’s important to prioritize the health and safety of everyone. Plus, by keeping everyone safe, your restaurant will be able to remain open and operating! In this blog post, we’ll explore some tips and tricks for high touch restaurant cleaning.
High-touch areas in your restaurant–like door handles, menus, and countertops, have the biggest potential to spread germs and illnesses like COVID-19. Other areas, too, like the bottoms of shoes and your building’s heating and air conditioning systems, can also spread germs and airborne particles. Luckily, experts recommend a number of steps you can take for high touch restaurant cleaning and to minimize the spread of germs in your establishment.
Door Handles
Door handles are one of the most high-touch areas in your restaurant. Because of this, they’re a surface that has great potential to spread germs. This is especially true if your restaurant has handles that turn, but it’s also the case if you have push bars or panels. In order to keep these areas clean, try using EPA-registered disinfectant products such as disinfectant sprays. Make sure to follow the instructions on the labels of these products!
Menus
You can use similar steps to cleaning door handles to clean the #1 most high-touch area in your restaurant–the menu! However, other than cleaning practices, we’d also like to offer additional suggestions for your menu. The COVID pandemic has given a great incentive for moving to virtual or disposable menus! Digital menus can be accessed through QR codes or your restaurant’s website via customers’ personal devices, eliminating the need for physical menus that need to be constantly sanitized. For customers that don’t want or aren’t able to access your digital menu, have a stack of single-use paper menus on hand.
High Touch Restaurant Cleaning: Countertops and Tables
Like your physical menus and door handles, using disinfectant products to sanitize your restaurant’s countertops and tables is extremely important. Sanitize and disinfect tables between each group of guests. Also, make sure that staff members are cleaning kitchen counters twice as regularly as they would during “normal” circumstances. Look for products that are made for industrial environments.
High Touch Restaurant Cleaning: Bottoms of Shoes
Our shoes go everywhere we do, and thus have the potential to carry germs and bacteria. While contracting COVID-19 from germs that live on the bottom of shoes is unlikely, you can minimize the chances most effectively by purchasing a disinfecting floor mat for your restaurant’s entrances. Of course, you should also increase the regularity of when your restaurant’s floors are cleaned as well.
Heating and Air Conditioning Systems
HVAC systems also have the potential to spread germs and infectants. Have your restaurant’s systems inspected by a professional and see if there are any improvements that can be made to improve ventilation. Also, use outdoor seating areas! Don’t forget to also check ventilation in the kitchen and restrooms, not just the dining rooms. Fans can be positioned to enhance the effectiveness of your ventilation systems and supplementary open windows.
We hope that these tips have been useful to you as your restaurant improves its strategies for cleaning high-touch areas!
