One of the most important priorities as a restaurant owner is keeping your kitchen in tip-top shape. Implementing a regular cleaning and equipment maintenance plan for your commercial kitchen provides a wide range of advantages, from helping you avoid safety violations and costly repairs to ensuring customer satisfaction. 

Keeping your kitchen spotless and kitchen appliances such as your combi oven, refrigeration equipment, and other kitchen equipment in great shape, however, requires more than just regular cleaning; if you want to maintain a kitchen that your customers and employees alike will appreciate while also preventing expensive commercial kitchen equipment repairs, you will need to implement a thorough maintenance checklist and schedule. 

In this comprehensive guide to commercial kitchen maintenance, we’ll cover all of the factors you need to consider in order to keep your restaurant’s kitchen sparkling, including why maintaining a clean commercial kitchen is important, how to create a commercial kitchen maintenance checklist, and how to choose the ideal commercial kitchen cleaning services for your restaurant’s needs. 

Importance of Maintaining a Clean Commercial Kitchen 

There are numerous reasons why it is vital to maintain a clean commercial kitchen, including: 

• Food Safety: Cleanliness and food safety go hand in hand. If you don’t clean your restaurant equipment on a regular basis, you risk contaminating the food that you serve to customers. This not only leads to unhappy customers and a poor reputation but can also lead to safety violations that could put your restaurant’s licensing at risk. 
• Cross Contamination: Cross contamination is a serious issue that restaurants must prevent. For example, cutting vegetables on the same surface that you used to prepare raw chicken can lead to those vegetables being contaminated when you serve them. Proper cleaning ensures that all of your surfaces and restaurant equipment won’t cross-contaminate the food that you prepare. 
• Health and Safety Compliance: Restaurants are required to comply with a range of health and safety requirements, and keeping a clean kitchen is central to many of those requirements. If you want to avoid non-compliance fines and potentially losing your license, keeping your kitchen clean is vital. 
• Employee Morale: No one likes working in a dirty or unsafe environment. By keeping your commercial kitchen clean, you can boost employee morale by providing your kitchen staff with a workplace that is safe and pleasant. 
• Customer Satisfaction: Customers won’t always know when your kitchen isn’t clean. When it affects the quality of the food that you serve, though (which is a real possibility when cooking in an unclean kitchen) then customers are sure to notice. To preserve your reputation as a high-quality establishment, maintaining a clean kitchen is just as important as great customer service and great-tasting food. 
• Avoiding Repair Costs: Commercial equipment kitchen repair can quickly become expensive. With the right preventative maintenance, though, you can avoid a lot of restaurant equipment repair expenses and reduce the frequency that repair services are required. 

Setting a Regular Cleaning Schedule 

One of the most important keys to keeping a clean commercial kitchen is setting (and sticking to!) a regular cleaning schedule. Your cleaning schedule should include both routine cleanings as well as regular maintenance of your cooking appliances and should be broken down based on the frequency that these tasks that need to be completed. While your cleaning schedule should be customized based on your kitchen and its unique cleaning/preventive maintenance needs, most commercial kitchen cleaning schedules should be broken down into daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly checklists. 

With that said, let’s take a look at an example of a comprehensive commercial kitchen cleaning checklist that a restaurant might implement. 

A Comprehensive Commercial Kitchen Cleaning Checklist 

Here is an example of a comprehensive commercial kitchen cleaning checklist broken down by frequency: 

Daily 

• Cleaning Surfaces and Equipment: Any surface or equipment that is used for food preparation should be cleaned and sanitized on a daily basis. 
• Cleaning Appliances: Commercial kitchen appliances should likewise be cleaned and sanitized daily. 
• Sweeping Floors: Floors should be swept on a daily basis to remove any dirt and debris. 
• Organizing Equipment & Supplies: Every piece of equipment and gear used throughout the day should have a designated spot. Employees should take time to arrange and organize the kitchen for the next day. 

Weekly 

• Cleaning Equipment: Along with a daily wipe-down of your kitchen equipment, you should more thoroughly clean each piece of equipment used for food prep on a weekly basis. 
• Cleaning Appliances: Appliances should also be cleaned thoroughly each week. This includes boiling out fryers, wiping down the racks and walls of your ovens, and cleaning other appliances such as refrigerators, cooktops, grills, and dishwashers. 
• Cleaning Exhaust Hoods and Vents: Cleaning the dust and debris from your ventilation system weekly will ensure that it is able to properly ventilate the air in your kitchen. 
• Storage areas: Unlike areas where food is prepped, storage areas don’t generally need to be cleaned on a daily basis, but they should be cleaned and organized weekly. 
• Drains: Clearing your drains on a weekly basis will help prevent drain clogs and the various issues that they cause. 
• Floors: The floors in your kitchen should be mopped and swept on a weekly basis. 

Monthly 

• Deep Cleaning Equipment: Any equipment that is used for food prep should undergo deep cleaning once a month. 
• Deep Cleaning Appliances: Appliances should be deep cleaned once per month as well and should also undergo a thorough inspection to ensure that there are no maintenance issues that need to be addressed. 
• Exhaust Hoods and Vents: In addition to a weekly wipe-down, exhaust hoods and vents should be cleaned more thoroughly once per month. 
• Floors, Walls, and Ceilings: Floors should be cleaned once a week as well in addition to a monthly deep cleaning. Walls and ceilings, though, typically only need to be cleaned once per month. This cleaning should address grease and grime buildup that can harness bacteria and germs if not addressed in the long term. 
• Sinks: Sinks should be deep cleaned and sanitized once per month. 
• Storage Areas: Along with weekly cleaning and inspection, you should also conduct a deep cleaning of your storage areas once per month. 
• Drains: Deep clean and treat your drains once per month to ensure that there is no clogging and utilize drain cleaner as necessary. 

Cleaning Supplies to Have On-Deck 

To execute your commercial kitchen cleaning plan, you are going to need a number of cleaning supplies. This includes supplies such as: 

• Enzymatic floor cleaner 
• Concentrated cleaners and degreasers 
• Dishwashing detergent 
• Hard surface cleaners 
• Odor neutralizers and air fresheners 
• Oven and grill cleaner 
• Neutral cleaner concentrate 

Using a Trusted Commercial Cleaner

Relying solely on your kitchen staff to keep your commercial kitchen clean is generally not the best approach. For one, your cooks may not have the experience and expertise to properly clean and maintain a commercial kitchen. A restaurant’s staff also tends to lack the available time to both prepare and serve food as well as attend to a kitchen’s cleaning requirements. 

A much more reliable option is to work with a trusted commercial cleaner such as Enviro-Master Services. Along with ensuring that your kitchen is properly cleaned and maintained using the best available products and processes, working with a commercial cleaner will typically be the more cost-effective option as well since it can eliminate the need to hire in-house employees whose primary responsibility is cleaning and maintenance.  

By partnering with a trusted commercial cleaner, you can invest in the appearance and cleanliness of your business while at the same time reducing the workload of your kitchen staff. 

Enviro-Master Services: Professional Kitchen Cleaning Solutions

At Enviro-Master Services, we offer numerous industry-leading commercial cleaning services that are ideally suited for commercial kitchen cleaning. This includes expert services such as: 

• Re-Fresh Power Washing: Power washing is the most efficient and effective way to clean hard surfaces. With Enviro-Master’s Re-Fresh Power Washing Service, we’ll be able to get your kitchen’s floors, walls, countertops, and other hard surfaces spotless in little time at all. With a sanitizing, heated water treatment, our Re-Fresh service will completely remove the grease buildup throughout your kitchen. Incorporate this service into your monthly cleaning routine, or as needed, to ensure a clean, healthy commercial kitchen. 
• Electrostatic Spraying: Electrostatic spraying provides 360-degree coverage of a hospital-grade disinfectant and enables us to quickly sanitize entire areas and hard surfaces for improved food safety. 
• Drain Treatment: Enviro-Master’s weekly Foaming Drain Line Service will keep your kitchen’s drains clean and clear in order to prevent distracting odors and overflowing drains. 
• Tile and Grout Cleaning: Dirt and grime can quickly build up in the grout of tile floors. By using specialized equipment with commercial-grade extractors and low water pressure to safely scrub your tile surfaces, Enviro-Master’s Tile and Grout Deep Cleaning Service is able to keep your kitchen’s tile floors clean and sanitary. 
• Our Products: Along with offering expert commercial kitchen cleaning services, Enviro-Master also offers for sale the same high-quality commercial cleaning products that our own certified technicians use. If you decide to complete your commercial kitchen cleaning requirements in-house, be sure to check out the unrivaled commercial cleaning products that we have for sale! 

Other Services for Your Business 

Along with numerous services that are perfect for keeping your commercial kitchen clean, Enviro-Master also offers other services that are ideal solutions for restaurant owners, including: 

• Restroom Cleaning: Maintaining clean restrooms at your restaurant is just as important when it comes to customer and employee satisfaction as maintaining a clean kitchen. With Enviro-Master’s Restroom & Hygiene Service, we’ll keep the restrooms at your establishment stocked, pleasant, and sanitary.  
• Hand Soap Refill: Enviro-Master’s Hand Hygiene Program restocks all the hand soap in your restaurant’s restrooms at whatever frequency your establishment requires so that your customers and employees always have high-quality, great-smelling hand soap available.  
• Paper Management: Toilet paper and paper towels are an essential supply for any restaurant restroom, and our Paper Management Program ensures that your restrooms are always stocked with just the right amount of paper products. 

Keep Your Commercial Kitchen Spotless With Help From Enviro-Master Services

At Enviro-Master Services, we are committed to helping restaurant owners maintain the clean and sanitary kitchens that their customers expect. To learn more about any of our exceptional commercial cleaning services, be sure to contact us today!