Customers will know the difference.
Before ever sitting down to eat, let alone being served, diners take in their surroundings when they walk into a restaurant. It could be their first visit or their hundredth, they could be aiming for a nice family dinner or quick, satisfying bite while traveling; regardless, beyond the décor, these guests will notice something far more important: the cleanliness. Some customers make it a point to visit the restroom before sitting down to order. If the facility fails the white glove test, the restaurant loses a potential sale.
Cleanliness can make or break the reputation of the restaurant, and yet typically little time goes into training restaurant employees on proper cleaning methods, and few establishments hire commercial cleaning companies because they don’t realize the benefit they can bring.
Hired as servers, cooks, hosts and hostesses, the employees are expected to know how to clean. Cleaning becomes something employers pass off as general knowledge, something everyone should know how to do because everyone has had experience cleaning, to some degree.
But what if it were someone’s job to clean, and they were trained specifically to clean thoroughly, to know how to inspect their areas, and to do the best job that could be done? Imagine that person was trained to know the difference between various cleaning products, which ones work best, and how to properly use them to get their full benefits?
Not things the chef, or kitchen staff are trained to excel at. And besides, why pay top wages to someone to do a job they are not trained to do? Does it make sense to have a hostess, who is ostensibly hired for her social skills and ability to make the customer feel valued, completely work against her personality type to become a detail-oriented cleaner? The result will be a dissatisfied employee and an unsatisfactory cleanup.
Guests don’t want to know about your labor budget. They don’t care that you are trying to save money by multi-tasking your employees. They want more than great food: they want a memorable dining experience! You cannot give that to them without the confidence that your restaurant’s cleanliness is top notch.
Commercial cleaning employees make it their job to clean thoroughly (after all, that’s what they’re there to do — not serve food or drinks). They see cleaning as a multifacted task. The establishment must not only look clean, but smell fresh and be germ free. No ghostly stains, no hint of cooking oil, just the kind of fresh your grandmother used to get by letting the breeze flow through her gingham curtains.
And let’s not forget the food critics.
Points get knocked immediately if your restaurant isn’t up to par, and that always includes cleanliness.
We’re taught from a young age that it’s OK to ask for help, and then we have to re-learn it later in life. It’s typical to expect a lot from an employee, even at minimum wage — and high turnover rates are typical, too, in the restaurant business especially — which, of course, leads to more money spent on hiring and training new employees. Restaurant managers can hand them the mop, but every time that will mean biting off more than they can chew.