Raise the Bar on Restaurant Cleaning & Sell New Services

Episode 38

 

Ray

Joel, we’re back, and we are talking about raising the bar in a restaurant cleaning. I cannot wait for this. Quite frankly, I love to go out and eat.

 

Joel

I’m trying to raise that bar, Ray. I’m trying to raise the bar.

Ray

What do you have on this topic? Because I know this is an area that you have done a lot of work in.

 

Joel

We have restaurants that we clean in my janitorial business. In addition, I have several clients, one of them that owns Ceilings Made Beautiful, Roy Daniels, who actually had asked me if we could touch on this topic. A lot of restauranteurs, cleaning is important, but it’s not really important. Because obviously, cleaning to them is a cost. I’ve always said that cleaning should be seen as a profit center. So, if you own a restaurant and you have dirty restrooms and a dirty front dining area, you’re going to lose customers. Because your facility is not clean because they are not coming back.

 

Ray

One of the things I’ve heard you say and really stuck with me is, “I can tell you what the kitchen looks by the restrooms”.

 

Joel

Yes. Usually, if the restrooms are in disarray, the back of the house is going to be in disarray as well. It is so important here in Monroe County, in Rochester, New York. The Monroe County Health Department going to restaurants. And every week, there’s a list that’s put out. These companies had serious fails. Last week, there was, I think, 25 restaurants on the list. And the picture of the front of the restaurant lists out all of the issues. And typically, on a lot of them, there’s a lot of cleaning issues. Because if we don’t remove the food products and the soils that breed bacteria or insects or having mice and rats come in. If we can clean that up and remove it, then those problems go away for a restaurant.

 

Ray

Yeah, the attractants are gone.

 

Joel

And years ago, when I worked for another company, I walked into a pizza place and they said, oh, we only have about a teaspoon of oil that gets put up into the hoods. And I go, okay, when’s the last time you had your hoods cleaned? And they told me, two years ago. Well, that’s an awful lot of teaspoons of oil that’s now in that hood system in the planum and up the duck work and out the fan unit. Again, it may not seem like a lot. And anybody who’s seen any of Roy’s videos on LinkedIn, you can see where you walk into an area and it looks like it’s clean until he cleans the surface. And it’s like, “Oh, I thought that wall was white. No, it’s yellow or brown, and now it’s white after he’s cleaned it”.

 

Ray

I’ve seen some of those videos.

 

Joel

And again, I don’t know how often some of those places are done or whatever. But it shows you, grease is sticky. So, it’s going to attract insects, and insects are going to get on it, and they’re going to get stuck in it, and they’re going to die there. And so. it just creates additional issues. Because now the dead insects are going to create other critters to come in and try to eat the dead insects. It is a very big thing that restauranteurs need to think about, is that cleaning really is a profit center for them. And who wants their restaurant named and put in the newspaper with the front of their building and what it looks like and the name of their company? With every violation. It doesn’t matter if the food was out or whatever. It’s every violation that they had. It is so critical because people look at that and go, “I used to eat there. I’m not going to eat there now.” So that supposed costs… You start keeping your facility clean and people have good experiences and then go into those restrooms and they look clean, they feel clean. They have a smell of clean, which is no odors at all. So, you’re not covering bacteria up with fragrances and things like that, people are going to come back.

 

Joel

And although they don’t tell as many friends about positive experiences, they do tell their friends. “Hey, you’re going on a first date. Well, you should go to this restaurant because not only was the service good, but the facility is clean.”

 

Ray

Then let me pose one other question to you because this is great direction to the restauranteur. Clean will always be more attractive in a food environment. But to the cleaning company owner. How do they spur themselves on or how do they use this to either attract new business or talk to a restaurant who is their client into a deeper clean?

 

Joel

A lot of the topics that I’ve just touched on. Explain what’s happening to the restaurant; What could be driving customers away. If you know that particular client really, really well, you usually can have an honest conversation like, well, are your sales trending up or down? What’s different? Well, the place hasn’t been deep cleaned in three months. I’ve noticed that things are trailing. As opposed to where they were right after you came in cleaned. It may spur, hey, something’s got to be done more often. It may be just an area that needs to be (cleaned). Maybe the restrooms have to be deep cleaned a little bit more often.

 

Ray

So, setting up that schedule.

 

Joel

Correct. Setting up a schedule of when to go in, because once a year is not enough for a deep clean, particularly in a restaurant. Because there is oils, there is foods, things fall on the carpet.

 

Ray

There’s so much traffic from patrons.

 

Joel

Correct. Just keeping facilities top of mind and keeping cleaning front of mind of a manager. Because they get restaurant to get caught up in the problems just like we do as cleaning business owners. They have a lot of the same issues we have. Short staff, because that’s what’s happened since COVID. The job market has been way different than it was five years ago. They have the same types of issues with their staff that we have. They’re having the same increase in costs as we have. But when you can relate that increase in cleaning at whatever price that is set at also helps them increase their sales by a minimum of that much. And people have those positive experiences. They can see the benefit of what they’re doing because a restauranteur won’t buy a service that they don’t see value.

 

Ray

Well, the margins are slim. (They are.) Joel, great advice. Thank you.

 

Joel

You’re welcome.